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University of California • Berkeley

From the Collection of

Edward Hellman Heller

and

Elinor Raas Heller

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS

THE

MILL ON THE FLOSS

BY

GEORGE ELIOT

AUTHOR OF
SCENES OP CLSBIOAL LIFR" AND "ADAM BEDS'

In their death they were not divided.'

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. I.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

EDINBURGH AND LONDON

MDCCCLX

TTie Right of Translation is reserved.

Digitized by tine Internet Archive

in 2008 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/flossmillon01eliorich.

CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

BOOK FIRST.

BOY AND GIRL.

CHAP. PACK

I. OUTSIDE DORLCOTE MILL 1

ir. MR TULLIVER, OF DORLCOTE MILL, DECLARES HIS

RESOLUTION ABOUT TOM «

HL MR RILEY GIVES HIS ADVICE CONCERNING A SCHOOL

FOR TOM 17

IV. TOM IS EXPECTED 42

V. TOM COMES HOME 52

VL THE AUNTS AND UNCLES ARE COMING 71

Vn. ENTER THE AUNTS AND UNCLES 93

Vin. MR TULLIVER SHOWS HIS WEAKER SIDE 136

IX. TO OARUM FIRS 155

X. MAGGIE BEHAVES WORSE THAN SHE EXPECTED 181

XI. MAGGIE TRIES TO RUN AWAY FROM HER SHADOW 193

Xn. MR AND MRS GLEGG AT HOME 215

ion. MR TULLIVER FURTHER ENTANGLES TfiE SKEIN OF LIFE 239

VI CONTENTS.

BOOK SECOND.
SCHOOL-TIME.

CHAP. PAGE

T. TOM'S "FIRST half" 247

II. THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS 285

III. THE NEW SCHOOLFELLOW 299

IV. ''THE YOUNG IDEA" 311

V. MAGGIE'S SECOND VISIT 331

VL A LOVE SCENE 340

VIL THE GOLDEN GATES ARE PASSED 349

BOOK FIRST

BOY AND GIRL

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

CHAPTER L

OUTSIDE DORLCOTE MILL.

A WIDE plain, where the broadening Floss hur-
ries on between its green banks to the sea, and
the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its
passage with an impetuous embrace. On this
mighty tide the black ships — laden with the fresh-
scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing
seed, or with the dark glitter of coal — are borne
along to the town of St Ogg's, which shows its
aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its
wharves between the low wooded hill and the
river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple
hue under the transient glance of this February sun.
Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures.
VOL. I. A-

2 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the
seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already
with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown
com. There is a remnant still of the last year's
golden clusters of beehive ricks rising at intervals
beyond the hedgerows ; and everywhere the hedge-
rows are studded with trees : the distant ships seem
to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-
brown saUs close among the branches of the spread-
ing ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary
Eipple flows with a lively current into the Floss.
How lovely the little river is, with its dark, chang-
ing wavelets ! It seems to me like a living com-
panion while I wander along the bank and listen to
its low placid voice, as to the voice of one who is
deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping
willows. I remember the stone bridge.

And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a
minute or two here on the bridge and look at it,
though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on
in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of de-
parting February it is pleasant to look at — ^perhaps
the chill damp season adds a charm to the trimly-
kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms
and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast.
The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 3

little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy
fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I
look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate
bright-green powder softening the outline of the
great trunks and branches that gleam from under
the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moist-
ness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping
their heads far into the water here among the
withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they
make in the drier world above.

The rush of the water, and the booming of the
mill, bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to
heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are
like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from
the world beyond. And now there is the thunder
of the huge covered waggon coming home with
sacks of grain. That honest waggoner is thinking
of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this
late hour ; but he will not touch it till he has fed
his horses, — the strong, submissive, meek-eyed
beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at
him from between their blinkers, that he should
crack his whip at them in that awful manner, as if
they needed that hint ! See how they stretch their
shoulders up the slope towards the bridge, with all
the more energy because they are so near home.

4 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp
the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks
bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles
of their struggling haunches ! I should like well to
hear them neigh over their hardly-earned feed of
corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed
from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into
the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and
down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch
of the covered waggon disappears at the turning
behind the trees.

Now I can turn my eyes towards the mill again,
and watch the unresting wheel sending out its dia-
mond jets of water. That little girl is watching it
too : she has been standing on just the same spot at
the edge of the water ever since I paused on the
bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown
ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual
remonstrance with the wheel ; perhaps he is jealous,
because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so
rapt in its movement. It is time the little play-
fellow went in, I think ; and there is a very bright
fire to tempt her: the red light shines out imd^
the deepening grey of the sky. It is time, too, for
me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of
this bridge. ....

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 5

Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been
pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and
dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front
of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon
many years ago. Before I dozed ofif, I was going to
tell you what Mr and ^Irs Tulliver were talking
about, as they sat by the bright fire in the left-hand
parlour on that very afternoon I have been dream-
ing of.

CHAPTEE 11.

ME TULLIVEE, OF DORLCOTE MILL, DECLAEES
HIS EESOLUTION ABOUT TOM.

" What I want, you know," said Mr Tulliver — " what
I want is to give Tom a good eddication ; an eddica-
tion as'll be a bread to him. That was what I was
thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave
'th' academy at Ladyday. I mean to put him to a
downright good school at Midsummer. The two
years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd
meant to make a miUer and farmer of him ; for he's
had a fine sight more schoolin' nor / ever got : all
the learnin' my father ever paid for was a bit o' birch
at one end and the alphabet at th' other. But I
should like Tom to be a bit of a scholard, so as he
might be up to the tricks o' these fellows as talk fine
and write with a flourisL It 'ud be a help to me wi'
these law-suits, and arbitrations, and things. I
wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad — I

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 7

should be sorry for him to be a raskill — but a sort
o' engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and val-
lyer, like Kiley, or one o' them smartish businesses
as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-
chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one,
and they're not far off being even wi' the law, / be-
lieve ; for Riley looks Lawyer Wakem i' the face as
hard as one cat looks another. He's none frightened
at hina."

Mr Tulliver was speaking to his wife, a blond
comely woman, in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to
think how long it is since fan-shaped caps were
worn — they must be so near coming in agaiiL At
that time, when Mrs Tulliver was nearly forty, they
were new at St Ogg's, and considered sweet things).

" Well, Mr Tulliver, you know best: Tve no objec-
tions. But hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl and
have th' aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as
you may hear what Sister Glegg and Sister Pullet
have got to say about it ? There's a couple o' fowl
wants killing ! "

" You may kill every fowl i' the yard, if you like,
Bessy ; but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what
I'm to do wi' my own lad," said Mr Tulliver, de-
fiantly.

" Dear heart/' said Mrs Tulliver, shocked at this

8 THE MILL ON THE FLQSS.

sanguinary rhetoric, " how can you talk so, Mr TuJ-
liver ? But it's your way to speak disrespectful o'
my family ; and Sister Glegg throws all the blame
upo' me, though I m sure I'm as innocent as the
babe unborn. Tor nobody's ever heard me say as it
wasn't lucky for my children to have aunts and
uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Tom's
to go to a new school, I should like hun to go where
I can wash him and mend him ; else he might as
well have calico as linen, for they'd be one as yallow
as th' other before they'd been washed half-a-dozen
times. And then, when the box is goin' backards
and forrards, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-
pie, or an apple ; for he can do with an extry bit,
bless him, whether they stint him at the meals or
no. My children can eat as much victuals as most,
thank God."

" Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o'
the carrier's cart, if other things fit in," said Mr Tul-
liver. " But you mustn't put a spoke i' the wheel
about the washin', if we can't get a school near
enough. That's the fault I have to find wi' you,
Bessy : if you see a stick i' the road, you're allays
thinkin' you can't step over it. You'd want me
not to hire a good waggoner, 'cause he'd got a mole
on his face."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 9

"Dear heart!" said Mrs Tulliver, in mild sur-
prise, " when did I iver make objections to a man
because he'd got a mole on his face ? I'm sure I'm
rether fond o' the moles, for my brother, as is dead
an' gone, had a mole on his brow. But I can't
remember your iver offering to hire a waggoner
with a mole, Mr Tulliver. There was John Gibbs
hadn't a mole on his face no more nol: you have, an'
I was all for having you hire him ; an' so you did
hire him, an' if he hadn't died o' th' inflammation,
as we paid Dr Tumbull for attending him, he'd
very like ha' been driving the waggon now. He
might have a mole somewhere out o' sight, but how
was I to know that, Mr TuUiver?"

" No, no, Bessy ; I didn't mean justly the mole ;
I meant it to stand for summat else ; but niver
mind — it's puzzling work, talking is. What I'm
thinking on, is how to find the right sort o' school
to send Tom to, for I might be ta'en in again, as
I've been wi' th' academy. I'll have nothing to do
wi' a 'cademy again : whativer school I send Tom
to, it shan't be a 'cademy ; it shall be a place where
the lads spend their time i' summat else besides
blacking the family's shoes, and getting up the
potatoes. It's an uncommon puzzling thing to
know what school to pick."

10 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Mr Tulliver paused a minute or two, and dived
with both hands into his breeches pockets as if he
hoped to find some suggestion there. Apparently
he was not disappointed, for he presently said, *•' I
know what I'll do — 111 talk it over wi' Riley : he's
coming to-morrow, t' arbitrate about the dam."

'^ Well, Mr Tulliver, I've put the sheets out for
the best bed, and Kezia's got 'em hanging at the
fire. They aren't the best sheets, but they're good
enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he wiU ;
for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent
buying 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An'
if you was to die to-morrow, Mr Tulliver, they're
mangled beautiful, an' all ready, an' smell o' laven-
der as it 'ud be a pleasure to lay 'em out ; an' they
lie at the left-hand corner o' the big oak linen-chest,
at the back : not as I should trust anybody to look
'em out but myself."

As Mrs Tulliver uttered the last sentence, she
drew a bright bunch of keys from her pocket, and
singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger up
and down it with a placid smile while she looked
at the clear fire. If Mr Tulliver had been a sus-
ceptible man in his conjugal relation, he might
have supposed that she drew out the key to aid
her imagination in anticipating the moment when

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 11

he would be in a state to justify the production of
the best Holland sheets. Happily he was not so ;
he was only susceptible in respect of his right to
water-power; moreover, he had the marital habit
of not listening very closely, and, since his mention
of Mr Eiley, had been apparently occupied in a tac-
tile examination of his woollen stockings.

" I think IVe hit it, Bessy," was his first remark
after a short silence. " Kiley's as likely a man as
any to know o' some school ; he's had schooling
himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places — arbi-
tratin' and vallyin' and that. And we shall have
time to talk it over to-morrow night when the
business is done. I want Tom to be such a sort o'
man as Riley, you know — as can talk pretty nigh
as well as if it was all wrote out for him, and
knows a good lot o' words as don't mean much, so
as you can't lay hold of 'em i' law; and a good
solid knowledge o' business too."

" Well," said Mrs Tulliver, " so far as talking
proper, and knowing everything, and walking with
a bend in his back, and setting his hair up, I
shouldn't mind the lad being brought up to that
But them fine-talking men from the big to^vns
mostly wear the false shirt-fronts ; they wear a
frill till it's all a mess, and then hide it with a

12 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

bib ; I know Kiley does. And then, if Tom's to go
and live at Mudport, like Eiley, hell have a house
with a kitchen hardly big enough to turn in, an'
niver get a fresh egg for his breakfast, an' sleep up
three pair o' stairs — or four, for what I know — an'
be burnt to death before he can get down/'

"No, no," said Mr TuUiver, " I've no thoughts of
his going to Mudport : I mean him to set up his
office at St Ogg's, close by us, an' live at home.
But," continued Mr Tulliver after a pause, " what
I'm a bit afraid on is, as Tom hasn't got the right
sort o' brains for a smart fellow. I doubt he's a bit
slowish. He takes after your family, Bessy."

" Yes, that he does," said Mrs Tulliver, accepting
the last proposition entirely on its own merits;
" he's wonderful for liking a deal o' salt in his
broth. That was my brother's way, and my father's
before him."

**' It seems a bit of a pity, though," said Mr Tulli-
ver, " as the lad should take after the mother's side
istead o' the little wench. That's the worst on't
wi' the crossing o' breeds : you can never justly cal-
kilate what'H come on't. The Httle un takes after
my side, now : she's twice as 'cute as Tom. Too
'cute for a woman, I'm afraid," continued Mr Tulli-
ver, turning his head dubiously first on one side and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 13

then on the other. " It's no mischief much while
she's a little un, but an over-'cute woman's no bet-
ter nor a long-tailed sheep — she'll fetch none the
bigger price for that."

" Yes, it is a mischief while she's a little un, Mr
Tulliver, for it all runs to naughtiness. How to
keep her in a clean pinafore two hours together
passes my cunning. An' now you put me i' mind,"
continued Mrs Tulliver, rising and going to the
window, " I don't know where she is now, an' it's
pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so — wanderin'
up an' down by the water, like a wild thing : she'll
tumble in some day."

Mrs Tulliver rapped the window sharply, beck-
oned, and shook her head, — a process which she
repeated more than once before she returned to her
chair.

"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr Tulliver," she ob-
served as she sat down, " but I'm sure the child's half
an idiot i' some things ; for if I send her up-stairs
to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for,
an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine
an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam
creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her down-
stairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God, no
more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a

14 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Provi-
dence, but it seems hard as I should have but one
gell, an' her so comical."

"Pooh, nonsense!" said Mr TuUiver, "she's a
straight black-eyed wench as anybody need wish
to see. I don't know i' what she's behind other
folks's children ; and she can read almost as well as
the parson.''

" But her hair won't curl all I can do with it, and
she's so franzy about having it put i' paper, and
I've such work as never was to make her stand and
have it pinched with th' irons."

" Cut it off — cut it off short," said the father, rashly.

" How can you talk so, Mr Tulliver ? She's too
big a gell, gone nine, and tall of her age, to have
her hair cut short; an' there's her cousin Lucy's
got a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair out
o' place. It seems hard as my sister Deane should
have that pretty child ; I'm sure Lucy takes more
after me nor my own child does. Maggie, Maggie,"
continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing
fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered
the room, "where's the use o' my telling you to
keep away from the water ? You'll tumble in and
be drownded some day, an' then you'll be sorry you
didn't do as mother told you."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 15

Maggie's hair, as she threw off her bonnet, pain-
fully confirmed her mother's accusation : Mrs Tul-
liver, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop,
"like other folks's children," had had it cut too
short in front to be pushed behind the ears ; and as
it was usually straight an hour after it had been
taken out of paper, Maggie was incessantly tossing
her head to keep the dark heavy locks out of her
gleaming black eyes — an action which gave her
very much the air of a small Shetland pony.

" 0 dear, 0 dear, Maggie, what are you thinkin'
of, to throw your bonnet down there ? Take it
up-stairs, there's a good gell, an' let your hair be
brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change
your shoes — do, for shame ; an' come an' go on with
your patchwork, like a little lady."

" 0 mother," said Maggie, in a vehemently cross
tone, " I don't want to do my patchwork."

" What ! not your pretty patchwork, to make a
counterpane for your aunt Gl egg?"

"It's foolish work," said Maggie, with a toss of
her mane, — " tearing things to pieces to sew 'em
together again. And I don't want to do anything
for my aunt Glegg — I don't like her."

Exit Maggie, dragging her bonnet by the string,
while Mr Tulliver laughs audibly.

16 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr
Tulliver,'' said the mother, with feeble fretful-
ness in her tone. " You encourage her i' naughti-
ness. An* her aunts will have it as it's me spoils
her."

Mrs Tulliver was what is called a good-tempered
person — never cried, when she was a baby, on any
slighter ground than hunger and pins ; and from the
cradle upwards had been healthy, fair, plump, and
dull-witted ; in short, the flower of her family for
beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are
not the best things for keeping, and when they turn
only a little sour, they may disagree with young
stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether
those early Madonnas of Eaphael, with the blond
faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their
placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed,
strong-willed boys got a little too old to do with-
out clothing. I think they must have been given to
feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish
as it became more and more ineffectual.

CHAPTER III.

ME EILEY GIVES HIS ADVICE CONCEENING A
SCHOOL FOR TOM.

The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-
frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with
liis good friend Tulliver, is Mr Riley, a gentleman
with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather
highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser,
but large-hearted enough to show a great deal of
honhommie towards simple country acquaintances
of hospitable habits. Mr Eiley spoke of such ac-
quaintances kindly as " people of the old school"

The conversation had come to a pause. Mr Tul-
liver, not without a particular reason, had abstained
from a seventh recital of the cool retort by which
Riley had shown himself too many for Dix, and
how Wakem had had his comb cut for once in his
life, now the business of the dam had been settled
by arbitration, and how there never would have

VOL. I. B

18 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

been any dispute at all about tbe height of water
if everybody was what they should be, and Old
Harry hadn't made the lawyers. Mr Tulliver was
on the whole a man of safe traditional opinions ;
but on one or two points he had trusted to his un-
assisted intellect, and had arrived at several ques-
tionable conclusions ; among the rest, that rats,
weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry.
Unhappily he had no one to tell him that this was
rampant Manichasism, else he might have seen his
error. But to-day it was clear that the good prin-
ciple was triumphant : this aftair of the water-power
had been a tangled business somehow, for all it
seemed — look at it one way — as plain as water's
water; but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn't got the
better of Riley. Mr Tulliver took his brandy-and-
water a little stronger than usual, and, for a man
who might be supposed to have a few hundreds
lying idle at his banker's, was rather incautiously
open in expressing liis high estimate of his friend's
business talents.

But the dam was a subject of conversation that
would keep ; it could always be taken up again at
the same point, and exactly in the same condition ;
and there was another subject, as you know, on
which Mr Tulliver was in pressing want of Mr

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 19

Eiley's advice. This was his particular reason for
remaining silent for a short space after his last
draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative
manner. He was not a man to make an abrupt
transition. This was a puzzling world, as he often
said, and if you drive your waggon in a hurry, you
may light on an awkward corner. Mr Riley, mean-
while, was not impatient. Why should he be ? Even
Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient
in his slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious
snufF, and sipping gratuitous brandy-and- water.

" There's a thing I've got i' my head," said Mr
TuUiver at last, in rather a lower tone than usual,
as he turned his head and looked steadfastly at his
companion.

" Ah ! " said Mr Riley, in a tone of mild interest.
He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-
arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all
circumstances. This immovability of face, and the
habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an
answer, made him trebly oracular to Mr Tulliver.

" It's a very particular thing," he went on ; " it's
about my boy Tom."

At the sound of this name, Maggie, who was
seated on a low stool close by the fire, with a large
book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair back

20 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that
roused Maggie when she was dreaming over her
book, but Tom's name served as well as the shrillest
whistle ; in an instant she was on the watch, with
gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mis-
chief, or at all events determined to fly at any one
who threatened it towards Tom.

" You see, I want to put him to a new school at
Midsummer/' said Mr Tulliver ; " he's comin' away
from the 'cademy at Ladyday, an' I shall let him
run loose for a quarter ; but after that I want to
send him to a downright good school; where they'll
make a scholard of him."

" Well," said Mr Eiley, *' there's no greater ad-
vantage you can give him than a good education.
Not," he added, with polite significance, " not that
a man can't be an excellent miller and farmer, and
a shrewd sensible fellow into the bargain, without
much help from the schoolmaster."

*' I believe you," said Mr Tulliver, winking, and
turning his head on one side, " but that's where it
is. I don't mean Tom to be a miller and farmer.
I see no fun i' that : why, if I made him a miller
an' farmer, he'd be expectin' to take to the mill
an' the land, an' a-hinting at me as it was time for
me to lay by an' think o' my latter end. Nay, nay,

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 21

IVe seen enough o' that wi' sons. I'll niver pull
my coat off before I go to bed. I shall give Tom an
eddication an' put him to a business, as he may
make a nest for himself, an' not want to push me
out 0* mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I'm
dead an' gone. I shan't be put off wi' spoon-meat
afore I've lost my teeth/'

This was evidently a point on which l^Ir TuUiver
felt strongly, and the impetus which had given un-
usual rapidity and emphasis to his speech, showed
itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterwards
in a defiant motion of the head from side to side,
and an occasional "Nay, nay," like a subsiding
growl.

These angry symptoms were keenly observed by
Maggie, and cut her to the quick Tom, it appeared,
was supposed capable of turning his father out of
doors, and of making the future in some way tra-
gic by his wickedness. This was not to be borne ;
and Maggie jumped up from her stool, forgetting
all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang
Avithin the fender ; and going up between her father's
knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice —

" Father, Tom wouldn't be naughty to you ever ;
I know he wouldn't."

Mrs Tulliver was out of the room superintending

22 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

a choice supper-dish, and Mr Tulliver's heart was
touched ; so Maggie was not scolded about the book.
Mr Riley quietly picked it up and looked at it, while
the father laughed with a certain tenderness in his
hard-lined face, and patted his little girl on the back,
and then held her hands and kept her between his
knees.

" What ! they mustn't say any harm o' Tom, eh ? "
said Mr Tulliver, looking at Maggie with a twink-
ling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr
Eiley, as though Maggie couldn't hear, " She under-
stands what one's talking about so as never was.
And you should hear her read — straight off, as if
she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her
book ! But it's bad— it's bad,'' Mr Tulliver added,
sadly, checking this blamable exultation ; "a woman's
no business wi' being so clever ; it'll turn to trouble,
I doubt. But, bless you ! " — here the exultation
was clearly recovering the mastery — " she'll read
the books and understand 'em better nor half the
folks as are growed up."

Maggie's cheeks began to flush with triumphant
excitement : she thought Mr Riley would have a
respect for her now ; it had been evident that he
thought nothing of her before.

Mr Riley was turning over the leaves of the book,

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 23

and she could make nothing of his face, with its
high-arched eyebrows ; but he presently looked at
her and said,

" Come, come and tell me something about this
book; here are some pictures — I want to know
what they mean."

Maggie with deepening colour went without hesi-
tation to Mr Eiley's elbow and looked over the book,
eagerly seizing one comer and tossing back her
mane, while she said,

" 0, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dread-
ful picture, isn't it ? But I can't help looking at it.
That old woman in the water's a witch — they've put
her in to find out whether she's a witch or no, and if
she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned — and
killed, you know — she's innocent, and not a witch,
but only a poor silly old woman. But what good
would it do her then, you know, when she was
drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to heaven,
and God would make it up to her. And this dread-
ful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing — oh,
isn't he ugly ? — I'll tell you what he is. He's the
devil really" (here Maggie's voice became louder
and more emphatic), " and not a right blacksmith ;
for the devil takes the shape of wicked men, and
walks about and sets people doing wicked things.

24 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and he's oftener in the shape of a bad man than any
other, because, you know, if people saw he was the
devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away, and
he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased."

Mr Tulliver had listened to this exposition of
Maggie's with petrifying wonder.

" Why, what book is it the wench has got hold
on ? " he burst out, at last.

« ' The History of the Devil,' by Daniel Defoe ;
not quite the right book for a little girl," said Mr
Eiley. " How came it among your books, Tulliver ? "

Maggie looked hurt and discouraged, while her
father said,

"Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Part-
ridge's sale. They was all bound alike — it's a good
binding, you see — and I thought they'd be all good
books. There's Jeremy Taylor's ' Holy Living and
Dying' among 'em; I read in it often of a Sunday"
(JMr Tulliver felt somehow a familiarity with that
great writer because his name was Jeremy) ; " and
there's a lot more of 'em, sermons mostly, I think ;
but they've all got the same covers, and I thought
they were all o' one sample, as you may say. But
it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is
a puzzlin' world."

" Well," said Mr Riley, in an admonitory patron-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 25

ising tone, as he patted Maggie on the head, " I ad-
vise you to put by the ' History of the Devil/ and read
some prettier book. Have you no prettier books ? "

"0 yes," said Maggie, reviving a little in the
desire to vindicate the variety of her reading, " I
know the reading in this book isn't pretty — but I
like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures
out of my own head, you know. But I've got
' iEsop's Fables,' and a book about kangaroos and
things, and the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' " . . . .

" Ah, a beautiful book," said Mr Eiley ; " you can't
read a better."

" Well, but there's a great deal about the devil in
that," said Maggie, triumphantly, " and 111 show
you the picture of him in his true shape, as he
fought with Christian."

Maggie ran in an instant to the comer of the
room, jumped on a chair, and reached down from the
small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan, which
opened at once, without the least trouble of search,
at the picture she wanted.

" Here he is," she said, running back to Mr Kiley,
"and Tom coloured him for me with his paints
when he was at home last holidays — the body all
black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because
he's all fire inside, and it shines out at his eyes."

26 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Go, go!" said Mr Tulliver, peremptorily, be-
ginning to feel rather uncomfortable at these free
remarks on the persona] appearance of a being
powerful enough to create lawyers ; " shut up the
book, and let's hear no more o' such talk. It is
as I thought — the child 'ull learn more mischief
nor good wi' the books. Go, go and see after your
mother."

Maggie shut up the book at once, with a sense
of disgrace, but not being inclined to see after her
mother, she compromised the matter by going into
a dark corner behind her father's chair, and nursing
her doll, towards which she had an occasional fit of
fondness in Tom's absence, neglecting its toilette,
but lavishing so many warm kisses on it that the
waxen cheeks had a wasted unhealthy appearance.

"Did you ever hear the like on't?" said Mr Tul-
liver, as Maggie retired. "It's a pity but what
she'd been the lad — she'd ha' been a match for
the lawyers, she would. It's the wonderful'st thing"
— here he lowered his voice — "as I picked the
mother because she wasn't o'er 'cute — bein' a good-
looking woman too, an' come of a rare family for
managing ; but I picked her from her sisters o'
purpose, 'cause she was a bit weak, like ; for I wasn't
a-goin' to be told the rights o' things by my own

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 27

fireside. But you see, when a man's got brains
himself, there's no knowing where they'll run to ;
an' a pleasant sort o' soft woman may go on breed-
ing you stupid lads and 'cute wenches, till it's like
as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It's an un-
common puzzlin' thing."

Mr Riley's gravity gave way, and he shook a little
under the application of his pinch of snuff, before he
said —

" But your lad's not stupid, is he ? I saw him,
when I was here last, busy making fishing-tackle ;
he seemed quite up to it."

"Well, he isn't not to say stupid — he's got a
notion o' things out o' door, an' a sort o' common-
sense, as he'd lay hold o' things by the right handle.
But he's slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads
but poorly, and can't abide the books, and spells all
wrong, they tell me, an' as shy as can be wi'
strangers, an' you never hear him say 'cute things
like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send
him to a school where they'll make him a bit nimble
with his tongue and his pen, and make a smart chap
of him. I want my son to be even wi' these fellows
as have got the start o' me with having better
schooling. Not but what, if the world had been
left as God made it, I could ha' seen my way, and

28 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

held my own wi' the best of 'em ; but things have
got so twisted round and wrapped up i' unreason-
able words, as arn't a bit like 'em, as I'm clean at
fault, often an' often. Everything winds about so
— the more straightforrard you are, the more you're
puzzled.''

Mr Tulliver took a draught, swallowed it slowly,
and shook his head in a melancholy manner, con-
scious of exemplifying the truth that a perfectly
sane intellect is hardly at home in this insane
world.

"You're quite in the right of it, Tulliver," observed
Mr Kiley. " Better spend an extra hundred or two
on your son's education, than leave it him in your
will. I know I should have tried to do so by a son
of mine, if I'd had one, though, God knows, I
haven't your ready-money to play with, Tulliver;
and I have a houseful of daughters into the bargain."

" I daresay, now, you know of a school as 'ud be
just the thing for Tom," said Mr Tulliver, not
diverted from his purpose by any sympatliy with
Mr Eijey's deficiency of ready cash.

Mr Eiley took a pinch of snufF, and kept Mr
Tulliver in suspense by a silence that seemed deli-
berative, before he said —

" I know of a very fine chance for any one that's

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 29

got the necessary money, and that's what you have,
Tulliver. The fact is, I wouldn't recommend any
friend of mine to send a boy to a regular school, if
he could afford to do better. But if any one wanted
his boy to get superior instruction and training,
where he would be the companion of his master, and
that master a first-rate fellow — I know his man. I
wouldn't mention the chance to everybody, because I
don't think everybody would succeed in getting it, if
he were to try ; but I mention it to you, Tulliver —
between ourselves."

The fixed inquiring glance with which Mr Tulli-
ver had been watching his friend's oracular face be-
came quite eager.

" Ay, now, let's hear,'* he said, adjusting himself
in his chair with the complacency of a person who
is thought worthy of important communications.

"He's an Oxford man," said Mr Riley, senten-
tiously, shutting his mouth close, and looking at Mr
Tulliver to observe the efiect of this stimulating
information.

"What! a parson?" said Mr Tulliver, rather
doubtfully.

" Yes — and an M.A. The bishop, I understand,
thinks very highly of him : why, it was the bishop
who got him his present curacy.''

30 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Ah?" said Mr TuUiver, to whom one thing was
as wonderful as another concerning these unfamiliar
phenomena. " But what can he want wi' Tom, then ?"

"Why, the fact is, he's fond of teaching, and
wishes to keep up his studies, and a clergyman has
but little opportunity for that in his parochial duties.
He's willing to take one or two boys as pupils to fill
up his time profitably. The boys would be quite of
the family — the finest thing in the world for them ;
under Stelling's eye continually."

" But do you think they'd give the poor lad twice
0* pudding ?" said Mrs Tulliver, who was now in her
place again. " He's such a boy for pudding as never
was ; an' a gTOwing boy like that — it's dreadful to
think o' their stintin' him."

" And what money 'ud he want ? '' said Mr Tul-
liver, whose instinct told him that the services of
this admirable M.A. would bear a high price.

" "Why, I know of a clergyman who asks a hun-
dred and fifty with his youngest pupils, and he's not
to be mentioned with S telling, the man I speak of
I know, on good authority, that one of the chief
people at Oxford said, ' Stelling might get the
highest honours if he chose." But he didn't care
about university honours. He's a quiet man — not
noisy."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 31

"Ah, a deal better — a deal better," said Mr Tul-
liver; "but a hundred and fifty's an uncommon
price. I never thought o' payin so much as that/'

" A good education, let me tell you, Tulliver — a
good education is cheap at the money. But Stelling
is moderate in his terms — ^he's not a grasping man.
I've- no doubt he'd take your boy at a hundred, and
that's what you wouldn't get many other clergymen
to do. I'll write to him about it, if you like."

Mr Tulliver rubbed his knees, and looked at the
carpet in a meditative manner.

" But belike he's a bachelor," observed Mrs Tul-
liver in the interval, " an' I've no opinion o' house-
keepers. There was my brother, as is dead an'
gone, had a housekeeper once, an' she took half the
feathers out o' the best bed, an' packed em' up an'
sent 'em away. An' it's unknown the linen she
made away with — Stott her name was. It 'ud break
my heart to send Tom where there's a housekeeper,
an' I hope you won't think of it, Mr Tulliver."

*' You may set your mind at rest on that score,
Mrs Tulliver," said Mr Riley, " for Stelling is mar-
ried to as nice a little woman as any man need wi.sh
for a wife. There isn't a kinder little soul in the
world; I know her family well. She has very much
your complexion — light curly hair. She comes of a

32 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

good Mudport family, and it's not every oiFer that
would have been acceptable in that quarter. But
Stelling 's not an everyday man. Eather a particular
fellow as to the people he chooses to be connected
with. But I think he would have no objection to
take your son — I think he would not, on my repre-
sentation."

" I don't know what he could have against the
lad," said Mrs TuUiver, with a slight touch of
motherly indignation, " a nice fresh-skinned lad as
anybody need wish to see.'*

" But there's one thing I'm thinking on," said Mr
Tulliver, turning his head on one side and looking
at Mr Riley, after a long perusal of the carpet.
"Wouldn't a parson be almost too high-learnt to
bring up a lad to be a man o' business ? My notion
o' the parsons was as they'd got a sort o' learning as
lay mostly out o' sight. And that isn't what I want
for Tom. I want him to know figures, and write
like print, and see into things quick, and know
what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in
words as aren't actionable. It's an uncommon fine
thing, that is," concluded Mr Tulliver, shaking his
head, "when you can let a man know what you
think of him without paying for it."

" 0 my dear Tulliver," said Mr Eiley, " you're

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 33

quite under a mistake about the clergy ; all the
best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The school-
masters who are not clergymen, are a very low set
of men generally "...

" Ay, that Jacobs is, at the 'cademy,'* interposed
Mr TuUiver.

" To be sure — men who have failed in other
trades, most likely. TNow a clergyman is a gentle-
man by profession and education ; and besides that,
he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and
prepare him for entering on any career with credit.
There may be some clergymen who are mere book-
men ; but you may depend upon it, Stelling is not
one of them — a man that's wide awake, let me tell
you. Drop him a hint, and that's enough. You
talk of figures, now ; you have only to say to Stell-
ing, * I want my son to be a thorough arithmeti-
cian,' and you may leave the rest to him."

Mr Eiley paused a moment, while Mr Tulliver,
somewhat reassured as to clerical tutorship, was
inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr Stelling
the statement, " I want my son to know ^rethmetic/'

"You see, my dear Tulliver," Mr Riley continued,
"when you get a thoroughly educated man, like
Stelling, he's at no loss to take up any branch of
instruction. When a workman knows the use

VOL. L C

34 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

of his tools, he can make a door as well as a
window."

" Ay, that's true," said Mr Tulliver, almost con-
vinced now that the clergy must be the best of
schoolmasters.

"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do for you," said
Mr Eiley, " and I wouldn't do it for everybody. Ill
see Stelling's father-in-law, or drop him a line when
I get back to Brassing, to say that you wish to place
your boy with his son-in-law, and I daresay Stell-
ing will write to you, and send you his terms."

"But there's no hurry, is there?" said Mrs Tul-
liver ; " for I hope, Mr Tulliver, you won't let Tom
begin at his new school before Midsummer. He
bfegan at the 'cademy at the Lady day quarter, and
you see what good 's come of it.'*

"Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi' bad malt upo'
Michaelmas day, else you'll have a poor tap," said
Mr Tulliver, winking and smiling at Mr Eiley with
the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife
conspicuously his inferior in intellect. "But it's
true there's no hurry — ^you've hit it there, Bessy."

" It might be as well not to defer the arrange-
ment too long," said Mr Riley, quietly, " for Stelling
may have propositions from other parties, and I
know he would not take more than two or three

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 35

boarders, if so many. If I were you, I think I
would enter on the subject with Stelling at once :
there's no necessity for sending the boy before Mid-
summer, but I would be on the safe side, and make
sure that nobody forestalls you."

" Ay, there's summat in that," said Mr Tulliver.

" Father/' broke in Maggie, who had stolen un-
perceived to her father s elbow again, listening with
parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy,
and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair —
" Father, is it a long way off where Tom is to go ?
shan't we ever go to see him ? "

" I don't know, my wench," said the father, tend-
erly. " Ask Mr Kiley ; he knows."

Maggie came round promptly in front of Mr
RUey, and said, " How far is it, please sir ? "

" 0, a long long way off," that gentleman answered,
being of opinion that children, when they are not
naughty, should always be spoken to jocosely. " You
must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him."

" That's nonsense ! " said Maggie, tossing her
head haughtily, and turning away with the tears
springing in her eyes. She began to dislike Mr
Eiley : it was evident he thought her silly and of
no consequence.

" Hush, Maggie, for shame of you, asking ques-

36 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

tions and chattering," said her mother. " Come
and sit down on your little stool and hold your
tongue, do. But/' added Mrs Tulliver, who had
her own alarm awakened, "is it so far off as I
couldn't wash him and mend him ? "

" About fifteen miles, that's all,'' said Mr Eiley.
" You can drive there and back in a day quite
comfortably. Or — Stelling is a hospitable, pleasant
man — he'd be glad to have you stay."

" But it's too far off for the linen, I doubt," said
Mrs Tulliver, sadly.

The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned
this difficulty, and relieved Mr Eiley from the labour
of suggesting some solution or compromise^ — a labour
which he would otherwise doubtless have under-
taken ; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very
obliging manners. And he had really given him-
self the trouble of recommending Mr Stelling to his
friend Tulliver without any positive expectation of
a solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, not-
withstanding the subtle indications to the contrary
which might have misled a too sagacious observer.
For there is nothing more widely misleading than
sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent ; and
sagacity persuaded that men usually act and speak
from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 37

end in view, is certain to waste its energies on
imaginary game. Plotting covetousness and de-
liberate contrivance, in order to compass a self-
ish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of
the dramatist : they demand too intense a mental
action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be
guilty of them. It is etvsy enough to spoil the
lives of our neighbours without taking so much
trouble : we can do it by lazy acquiescence and
lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we
hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralised
by small extravagancies, by maladroit flatteries, and
clumsily improvised insinuations. "We live from
hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family
of immediate desires — we do little else than snatch
a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking
of seed-corn or the next year's crop.

Mr Eiley was a man of business, and not cold
towards his own interest, yet even he was more
under the influence of small promptings than of
far-sighted designs. He had no private under-
standing with the Kev. Walter Stelling; on the
contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and his
acquirements — not quite enough perhaps to warrant
so strong a recommendation of him as he had given
to his fdend Tulliver. But he believed !Mr Stelling

38 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said so,
and Gadsby 's first cousin was an Oxford tutor;
which was better ground for the belief even than his
own immediate observation would have been, for
though Mr Riley had received a tincture of the
classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had
a sense of understanding Latin generally, his com-
prehension of any particular Latin was not ready.
Doubtless there remained a subtle aroma from his
juvenile contact with the De Senectute and the
Fourth Book of the jEneid, but it had ceased to be
distinctly recognisable as classical, and was only
perceived in the higher finish and force of his
auctioneering style. Then, Stelling was an Oxford
man, and the Oxford men were always — no, no, it
was the Cambridge men who were always good ma-
thematicians. But a man who had had a uni^sersity
education could teach anything he liked ; especially
a man like Stelling, who had made a speech at a
Mudport dinner on a political occasion, and had
acquitted himself so well that it was generally
remarked, this son-in-law of Timpson's was a
sharp fellow. It was to be expected of a Mudport
man, from the parish of St Ursula, that he would
not omit to do a good turn to a son-in-law of Timp-
son's, for Timpson was one of the most useful and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 39

influential men in the parish, and had a good deal of
business, which he knew how to put into the right
hands. Mr Kiley liked such men, quite apart from
any money which might be diverted, through their
good judgment, from less worthy pockets into his
own ; and it would be a satisfaction to him to say
to Timpson on his return home, "I've secured a
good pupil for your son-in-law." Timpson had a
large family of daughters ; Mr Riley felt for him :
besides, Louisa Timpson's face, with its light curls,
had been a familiar object to him over the pew
wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years ; — it
was natural her husband should be a commendable
tutor. Moreover, Mr Riley knew of no other school-
master whom he had any ground for recommending
in preference : why then should he not recommend
Stelling ? His friend TuUiver had asked him for an
opinion : it is always chilling, in friendly intercourse,
to say you have no opinion to give. And if you
deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to
do it with an air of conviction and well-founded
knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it,
and naturally get fond of it. Thus, Mr Riley,
knowing no harm of Stelling to begin with, and
wishing him well, so far as he had any wishes at all
concerning him, had no sooner recommended him

40 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

than he began to think with admiration of a man
recommended on such high authority, and would
soon have gathered so warm an interest on the
subject, that if Mr TuUiver had in the end declined
to send Tom to Stelling, Mr Eiley would have
thought his friend of the old school a thoroughly
pig-headed fellow.

If you blame Mr Eiley very severely for giving a
recommendation on such slight grounds, I must say
you are rather hard upon him. Why should an
auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had
as good as forgotten his free-school Latin, be ex-
pected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity which is
not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned
professions, even in our present advanced stage of
morality ?

Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness
in him can scarcely abstain from doing a good-
natured action, and one cannot be good-natured all
round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an in-
convenient parasite on an animal towards whom she
has otherwise no ill-will. What then ? We admire
her care for the parasite. If Mr Eiley had shrunk
from giving a recommendation that was not based
on valid evidence, he would not have helped Mr
Stelling to a paying pupil, and that would not have

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 41

been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider,
too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and compla-
cencies— of standing well with Timpson, of dispens-
ing advice when he was asked for it, of impressing
his friend Tulliver with additional respect, of saying
something, and saying it emphatically, with other
inappreciably minute ingredients that went along
with the warm hearth and the brandy-and- water to
make up Mr Riley's consciousness on this occasion
— would have been a mere blank

CHAPTER IV.

TOM IS EXPECTED.

It was a heavy disappointment to Maggie that she
was not allowed to go with her father in the gig
when he went to fetch Tom home from the academy ;
but the morning was too wet, Mrs Tulliver said, for
a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Maggie
took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a
direct consequence of this difference of opinion that
when her mother was in the act of brushing out the
reluctant black crop, Maggie suddenly rushed from
under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of
water standing near — in the vindictive determina-
tion that there should be no more chance of curls
that day.

" Maggie, Maggie," exclaimed Mrs Tulliver, sit-
ting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap,
" what is to become of you if you're so naughty ?
Ill tell your aunt Glegg and your aunt Pullet when

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 43

they come next week, and they'll never love you
any more. 0 dear, 0 dear ! look at your clean pin-
afore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's
a judgment on me as I've got such a child — they'll
think I've done summat wicked.''

Before this remonstrance was finished, Maggie
was already out of hearing, making her way towards
the great attic that ran under the old high-pitched
roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she
ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This
attic was Maggie's favourite retreat on a wet day,
when the weather was not too cold ; here she fretted
out all her ill-humours, and talked aloud to the
worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and
the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs ; and here
she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her
misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden
doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes
above the reddest of cheeks ; but was now entirely
defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering.
Three nails driven into the head commemorated as
many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly
struggle ; that luxury of vengeance having been sug-
gested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera
in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in
with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on

44 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

that occasion represented aunt Glegg. But immedi-
ately afterwards Maggie had reflected that if she
drove many nails in, she would not be so well able
to fancy that the head was hurt when she knocked
it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make be-
lieve to poultice it, when her fury was abated ; for
even aunt Glegg would be pitiable when she had
been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated,
so as to beg her niece's pardon. Since then she
had driven no more nails in, but had soothed herself
by alternately grinding and beating the wooden
head against the rough brick of the great chimneys
that made two square pillars supporting the roof.
That was what she did this morning on reaching
the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion that
expelled every other form of consciousness — even
the memory of the grievance that had caused it. As
at last the sobs were getting quieter, and the grind-
ing less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling
through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten
shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run
to the window. The sun was really breaking out ;
the sound of the mill seemed cheerful again ; the
granary doors were open ; and there was Yap, the
queer white-and-brown terrier, with one ear turned
back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely as if he

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 45

were in search of a companion. It was irresistible.
Maggie tossed her hair back and ran down-stairs,
seized her bonnet without putting it on, peeped, and
then dashed along the passage lest she should en-
counter her mother, and was quickly out in the
yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and singing
as she whirled, " Yap, Yap, Tom*s coming home ! "
while Yap danced and barked round her, as much
as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the
dog for it.

"Hegh, hegh. Miss, you'll make yourself giddy,
an' tumble down T the dirt," said Luke, the head
miller, a tall broad-shouldered man of forty, black-
eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general meali-
ness, like an auricula.

Maggie paused in her whirling and said, stagger-
ing a little, " 0 no, it doesn't make me giddy, Luke •
may I go into the mill with you ? "

Maggie loved to linger in the great spaces of the
mill, and often came out with her black hair
powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark
eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the
unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a
dim delicious awe as at the presence of an uncon-
trollable force — the meal for ever pouring, pouring
— the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and

46 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

making the very spider-nets look like a faery lace-
work — the sweet pure scent of the meal — all helped
to make Maggie feel that the mill was a little
world apart from her outside everyday life. The
spiders were especially a subject of speculation with
her. She wondered if they had any relations out-
side the mill, for in that case there must be a pain-
ful difficulty in their family intercourse — a fat and
floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted
with meal, must sufier a little at a cousin's table
where the fly was au naturel, and the lady-spiders
must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance.
But the part of the mill she liked best was the top-
most story— the corn-hutch, where there were the
great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and
slide down continually. She was in the habit of
taking this recreation as she conversed with Luke,
to whom she was very communicative, wishing him
to think well of her understanding, as her father did.

Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her posi-
tion with him on the present occasion, for, as she
sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was
busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which
was requisite in mill-society —

" I think you never read any book but the Bible
— <aidyou, Luke?"

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 47

" Nay, Miss — an' not much o' that," said Luke,
with great frankness. "I'm no reader, I arn't."

" But if I lent you one of my books, Luke ? I've
not got any 'very pretty books that would be easy
for you to read; but there's 'Pug's Tour of Europe'
— that would tell you all about the different sorts
of people in the world, and if you didn't understand
the reading, the pictures would help you — they
show the looks and ways of the people, and what
they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and
smoking, you know — and one sitting on a barrel."

" Nay, Miss, Fn no opinion o' Dutchmen. There
ben't much good i* knowin' about them"

"But they're our fellow-creatures, Luke — we
ought to know about our fellow-creatures."

" Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think. Miss ; all
I know — my old master, as war a knowin' man, used
to say, says he, ' K e'er I sow my wheat wi'out
brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he ; an' that war as
much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next
door. Nay, nay, I arn't goin' to bother mysen
about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo — an' rogues
enoo — wi'out lookin' i' books for em."

" 0, well," said Maggie, rather foiled by Luke's
unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, " per-
haps you would like ' -Animated Nature ' better —

48 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

that's not Dutclimen, you know, but elephants, and
kangaroos, and the civet cat, and the sun-fish, and a
bird sitting on its tail — I forget its name. There
are countries full of those creatures, instead of
horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you like to
know about them, Luke ? "

" Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an'
com — I can't do wi' knowin' so many things be-
sides my work. That's what brings folk to the
gallows — knowin' everything but what they'n got to
get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think,
what's printed i' the books : them printed sheets
are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets."

" Why, you're like my brother Tom, Luke," said
Maggie, wishing to turn the conversation agree-
ably; "Tom's not fond of reading. I love Tom so
dearly, Luke — better than anybody else in the
world. When he grows up, I shall keep his house,
and we shall always live together. I can tell him
everything he doesn't know. But I think Tom's
clever, for all he doesn't like books : he makes beau-
tiful whipcord and rabbit-pens."

" Ah," said Luke, " but he'll be fine an' vexed, as
the rabbits are all dead."

" Dead ! " screamed Maggie, jumping up from her
sliding seat on the com. " 0 dear, Luke ! What !

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 49

the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Tom
spent all his money to buy ? "

" As dead as moles," said Luke, fetching his com-
parison from the immistakable corpses nailed to the
stable-wall.

" 0 dear, Luke," said Maggie, in a piteous tone,
while the big tears rolled down her cheek ; " Tom
told me to take care of 'em, and I forgot. What
shall I do?"

" Well, you see. Miss, they were in that far tool-
house, an' it was nobody's business to see to 'em.
I reckon Master Tom told Harry to feed 'em, but
there's no countin' on Harry — he's a offal creatur as
iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers
nothing but his own inside — an' I wish it 'ud gripe
him."

" 0, Luke, Tom told me to be sure and remember
the rabbits every day ; but how could I, when they
did not come into my head, you know ? 0, he will
be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry
about his rabbits — and so am I sorry. 0, what
shall 1 do V

" Don't you fret, Miss," said Luke, soothingly,
"they're nash things, them lop-eared rabbits — they'd
happen ha' died, if they'd been fed. Things out o'
natur niver thrive : God A'mighty doesn't like 'em.

VOL. L D

50 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

He made the rabbits' ears to lie back, an' it's notbin'
but contrairiness to make 'em hing down like a
mastiff dog's. Master Tom 'ull know better nor
buy such things another time. Don't you fret, Miss.
Will you come along home wi' me, and see my wife?
I'm a-goin' this minute."

The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to
Maggie's grief, and her tears gradually subsided as
she trotted along by Luke's side to his pleasant cot-
tage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and
with the added dignity of a lean-to pig-sty, close by
the brink of the Kipple. Mrs Moggs, Luke's wife,
was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance. She ex-
hibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and
possessed various works of art. Maggie actually
forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this
morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a re-
markable series of pictures representing the Prodigal
Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except
that, as might have been expected from his defective
moral character, he had not, like that accomplished
hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with
a wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits
had left on her mind caused her to feel more than
usual pity for the career of this weak young man, par-
ticularly when she looked at the picture where he

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 51

leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his
knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while
the swine, apparently of some foreign breed, seemed
to insult him by their good spirits over their feast
of husks.

" I'm very glad his father took him back again
— raren't you, Luke ? " she said. " For he was very
sorry, you know, and wouldn't do wrong again."

" Eh, Miss," said Luke, " he'd be no great shakes,
I doubt, let's feyther do what he would for him."

That was a painful thought to Maggie, and she
wished much that the subsequent history of the
young man had not been left a blank

CHAPTER V.

TOM COMES HOME.

Tom was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there
was another fluttering heart besides Maggie's when
it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels
to be expected ; for if Mrs TuUiver had a strong
feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the
sound came — that quick light bowling of the gig-
whcels — and in spite of the wind, which was blow-
ing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect
Mrs Tulliver's curls and cap-strings, she came out-
side the door, and even held her hand on Maggie's
offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the
morning.

" There he is, my sweet lad ! But, Lord ha' mercy !
he's got never a collar on ; it's been lost on the road,
I'll be bound, and spoilt the set."

Mrs TuUiver stood with her arms open ; Maggie
jumped first on one leg and then on the other ; while

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 53

Tom descended from the gig, and said, with mas-
culine reticence as to the tender emotions, " Hallo !
Yap — what ! are you there ?"

Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly-
enough, though Maggie hung on his neck in rather
a strangling fashion, while his blue-grey eyes wan-
dered towards the croft and the lambs and the river,
where he promised himself that he would begin to
fish the first thing to-morrow morning. He was
one of those lads that grow everywhere in England,
and, at twelve or thirteen years of age, look as much
alike as goslings : — a lad with light-brown hair,
cheeks of cream and roses, foU lips, indeterminate
nose and eyebrows — a physiognomy in which it
seems impossible to discern anything but the generic
character of boyhood ; as difierent as possible from
poor Maggie's phiz, which Nature seemed to have
moulded and coloured with the most decided in-
tention. But that same Nature has the deep cunning
which hides itself under the appearance of open-
ness, so that simple people think they can see
through her quite well, and all the while she is
secretly preparing a refutation of their confident
prophecies. Under these average boyish physiog-
nomies that she seems to turn ojff by the gross, she
conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes,

54 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

some of her most unmodifiable characters ; and the
dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after
all turn out to be a passive being compared with
this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the in-
determinate features.

"Maggie," said Tom, confidentially, taking her
into a corner, as soon as his mother was gone out to
examine his box, and the warm parlour had taken
off the chill he had felt from the long drive, " you
don't know what I've got in my pockets," nodding
his head up and dovm as a means of rousing her
sense of mystery.

"No," said Maggie. "How stodgy they look,
Tom ! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts ?" Maggie's
heart sank a little, because Tom always said it was
" no good " playing with her at those games — she
played so badly.

" Marls ! no ; I've swopped all my marls with the
little fellows, and cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only
when the nuts are green. But see here !" He
drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.

"What is it?" said Maggie, in a whisper. "I
can see nothing but a bit of yellow."

"Why it's . . . a . . . new. . . guess, Maggie ! "

" 0, 1 can't guess, Tom," said Maggie, impatiently.

" Don't be a spitfire, else I won't tell you," said

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 55

Tom, thrusting his hand back into his pocket, and
looking determined.

" No, Tom," said Maggie, imploringly, laying hold
of the arm that was held stiffly in the pocket. " I'm
not cross, Tom ; it was only because I can't bear
guessing. Please be good to me."

Tom's arm slowly relaxed, and he said, "Well,
then, it's a new fish-line — two new uns — one for
you, Maggie, all to yourself. I wouldn't go halved
in the tofiee and gingerbread on purpose to save the
money ; and Gibson and Spouncer fought with me
because I wouldn't. And here's hooks ; see here !
.... I say, won't we go and fish to-morrow down
by Eound Pool ? And you shall catch your own fish,
Maggie, and put the worms on, and everything —
wont it be fun?"

Maggie's answer was to throw her arms round
Tom's neck and hug him, and hold her cheek against
his without speaking, while he slowly unwound some
of the line, saying, after a pause,

" Wasn't I a good brother, now, to buy you a line
all to yourself ? You know, I needn't have bought
it, if I hadn't Hked,"

" Yes, very, very good . . . . I cZo love you, Toul*'

Tom had put the line back in his pocket, and was
looking at the hooks one by one, before he spoke again

66 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn't
give in about the toffee/'

"0 dear! I wish they wouldn't fight at your
school, Tom. Didn't it hurt you ? "

" Hurt me ? no," said Tom, putting up the hooks
again, taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly
opening the largest blade, which he looked at medi-
tatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he
added —

"I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know — that's
what he got by wanting to leather me ; I wasn't
going to go halves because anybody leathered me."

" 0 how brave you are, Tom ! I think you're like
Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I
think you'd fight him — wouldn't you, Tom ? "

" How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly
thing ? There's no lions, only in the shows."

" No ; but if we were in the lion countries — I
mean, in Africa, where it's very hot — the lions eat
people there. I can show it you in the book where
I read it."

" Well, I should get a gun and shoot him."

" But if you hadn't got a gun — we might have
gone out, you know, not thinking — just as we go
fishing ; and then a great lion might run towards

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 57

US roaring, and we couldn't get away from him.
What should you do, Tom ?"

Tom paused, and at last turned away contemptu-
ously, saying, *' But the lion isn't coming. What's
the use of talking ? ''

" But I like to fancy how it would be," said
Maggie, following him. " Just think what you
would do, Tom."

" 0 don't bother, Maggie ! you're such a siUy — I
shall go and see my rabbits/'

Maggie's heart began to flutter with fear. She
dared not tell the sad truth at once, but she walked
after Tom in trembling silence as he went out,
thinking how she could tell him the news so as to
soften at once his sorrow and his anger; for Maggie
dreaded Tom's anger of all things — it was quite a
different anger from her own.

" Tom," she said, timidly, when they were out of
doors, " how much money did you give for your
rabbits?"

" Two half-crowns and a sixpence," said Tom,
promptly.

" I think I've got a great deal more than that in
my steel purse up-stairs. Pll ask mother to give it
you."

58 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"What for?" said Tom. "I don't want your
money, you silly thing. I've got a great deal more
money than you, because I'm a boy. I always have
half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas
boxes, because I shall be a man, and you only have
five-shilling pieces, because you're only a girl''

" Well, but, Tom — if mother would let me give
you two half-crowns and a sixpence out of my purse
to put into your pocket and spend, you know ; and
buy some more rabbits with it ? "

" More rabbits ? I don't want any more."

" 0, but Tom, they're all dead."

Tom stopped immediately in his walk and turned
round towards Maggie. " You forgot to feed 'em,
then, and Harry forgot ? " he said, his colour height-
ening for a moment, but soon subsiding. " 111 pitch *
into Harry — I'll have him turned away. And I
don't love you, Maggie. You shan't go fishing with
me to-morrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits
every day." He walked on again.

" Yes, but I forgot — and I couldn't help it, indeed,
Tom. I'm so very sorry," said Maggie, while the
tears rushed fast.

" You're a naughty girl," said Tom, severely,
" and I'm sorry I bought you the fish-line. I don't
love you."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 59

" 0, Tom, it's very cruel/' sobbed Maggie. " I'd
forgive you, if you forgot anythiug — I wouldn't
mind what you did — I'd forgive you and love you/'

" Yes, you're a silly — but I never do forget things
— / don't."

" 0, please forgive me, Tom ; my heart will break,"
said Maggie, shaking with sobs, clinging to Tom's
arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.

Tom shook her off, and stopped again, saying in
a peremptory tone, " Now, Maggie, you just listen.
Aren't I a good brother to you ? "

" Ye-ye-es," sobbed Maggie, her chin rising and
falling convulsedly.

" Didn't I think about your fish -line all this
quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money
o' purpose, and wouldn't go halves in the toffee, and
Spouncer fought me because I wouldn't ? "

" Ye-ye-es . . . and I . . . lo-lo-love you so, Tom."

" But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you
licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays
before that you let the boat di^ag my fish-line down
when I'd set you to Avatch it, and you pushed your
head through my kite, all for nothing."

" But I didn't mean," said Maggie ; " I couldn't
help it."

"Yes, you could," said Tom, "if you'd minded

60 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

what you were doing. And you're a naughty girl,
and you shan't go fishing with me to-morrow."

With this terrible conclusion, Tom ran away from
Maggie towards the mill, meaning to greet Luke
there, and complain to him of Harry.

Maggie stood motionless, except from her sobs,
for a minute or two ; then she turned round and
ran into the house, and up to her attic, where she
sat on the floor, and laid her head against the worm-
eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Tom
was come home, and she had thought how happy
she should be — and now he was cruel to her. What
use was anything, if Tom didn't love her ? 0, he
was very cruel ! Hadn't she wanted to give him
the money, and said how very sorry she was ? She
knew she was naughty to her mother, but she had
never been naughty to Tom — had never meant to
be naughty to him.

" 0, he is cruel ! " Maggie sobbed aloud, finding a
wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came
through the long empty space of the attic. She
never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish ;
she was too miserable to be angry.

These bitter sorrows of childhood ! when sorrow
is all new and strange, when hope has npt yet
got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 61

the space from summer to summer seems measure-
less.

Maggie soon thought she had been hours in the
attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all
having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well,
then, she would stay up there and starve herself —
hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all
night ; and then they would all be frightened, and
Tom would be sorry. Thus Maggie thought in the
pride of her heart, as she crept behind the tub ; but
presently she began to cry again at the idea that
they didn't mind her being there. If she went
down again to Tom now — would he forgive her? —
perhaps her father would be there, and he would take
her part. But, then, she wanted Tom to forgive her
because he loved her, not because his father told
him. No, she would never go down if Tom didn't
come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great
intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub;
but then the need of being loved, the strongest need
in poor Maggie's nature, began to wrestle with her
pride, and soon threw it. She crept from behind
her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but
just then she heard a quick footstep on the stairs.

Tom had been too much interested in his talk
with Luke, in going the round of the premises,

62 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

walking in and out where lie pleased, and whittling
sticks without any particular reason, except that he
didn't whittle sticks at school, to think of Maggie
and the effect his anger had produced on her.
He meant to punish her, and that business having
been performed, he occupied himself with other
matters, like a practical person. But when he had
been called in to tea, his father said, " Why, where's
the little wench ?" and Mrs TuUiver, almost at the
same moment, said, " Where's your little sister ? " —
both of them having supposed that Maggie and Tom
had been together all the afternoon.

" I don't know," said Tom. He didn't want to
" tell" of Maggie, though he was angry with her ; for
Tom TulKver was a lad of honour.

" What ! hasn't she been playing with you all
this while ?" said the father. " She'd been thinking
o' nothing but your coming home."

" I haven't seen her this two hours," says Tom,
commencing on the plumcake.

" Goodness heart ! she's got drownded," ex-
claimed Mrs TuUiver, rising from her seat and run-
ning to the window. " How could you let her do
so?" she added, as became a fearful woman, ac-
cusing she didn't know whom of she didn't know
what.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 63

" Nay, nay, she's none drownded," said Mr Tul-
liver. "YouVe been naughty to her, I doubt,
Tom?"

" I'm sure I haven't, father," said Tom, indignantly.
"I think she's in the house/'

"Perhaps up in that attic," said Mrs Tulliver,
"a-singing and talking to herself, and forgetting
all about meal-times."

"You go and fetch her down, Tom," said Mr
Tulliver, rather sharply, his perspicacity or hij
fatherly fondness for Maggie making him suspect
that the lad had been hard upon "the little un,"
else she would never have left his side. " And be
good to her, do you hear ? Else I'll let you know
better/'

Tom never disobeyed his father, for Mr Tulliver
was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never
let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but he
went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of
plumcake, and not intending to reprieve Maggie's
punishment, which was no more than she de-
served. Tom was only tliirteen, and had no de-
cided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding
them for the most part as open questions, but he
was particularly clear and positive on one point —
namely, that he would punish everybody who de-

64 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

served it: why, he wouldn't have minded being
punished himself, if he deserved it; but, then, he
never did deserve it.

It was Tom's step, then, that Maggie heard on
the stairs, when her need of love had triumphed
over her pride, and she was going down with her
swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity.
At least her father would stroke her head and say,
" Never mind, my wench." It is a wonderful sub-
duer, this need of love — this hunger of the heart —
as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature
forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face
of the world.

But she knew Tom's step, and her heart began to
beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He
only stood still at the top of the stairs and said,
" Maggie, you're to come down.'' But she rushed
to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, " 0 Tom,
please forgive me — I can't bear it — I will always be
good — always remember things — do love me —
please, dear Tom ? "

We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older.
We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express
ourselves in weU-bred phrases, and in this way pre-
serve a dignified alienation, showing much firmnes?
on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 65

We no longer approximate in our behaviour to the
mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but con-
duct ourselves in every respect like members of a
highly civilised society. Maggie and Tom were
stni very much like young animals, and so she could
rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a
random, sobbing way; and there were tender fibres
in the lad that had been used to answer to Maggie's
fondling ; so that he behaved with a weakness quite
inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as
much as she deserved : he actually began to kiss her
in return, and say —

" Don't cry, then, Magsie — here, eat a bit o' cake.'

Maggie's sobs began to subside, and she put out
her mouth for the cake and bit a piece ; and then
Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate
together and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows
and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliat-
ing resemblance to t\yo friendly ponies.

" Come along, Magsie, and have tea," said Tom
at last, when there was no more cake except what
was down-stairs.

So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next
morning Maggie was trotting with her own fishing-
rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in the
other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the

VOL L "E

66 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant from
under her beaver-bonnet because Tom was good to
her. She had told Tom, however, that she should
like him to put the worms on the hook for her, al-
though she accepted his word when he assured her
that worms couldn't feel (it was Tom's private
opinion that it didn't much matter if they did). He
knew all about worms, and fish, and those things ;
and what birds were mischievous, and how padlocks
opened, and which way the handles of the gates
were to be lifted. Maggie thought this sort of
knowledge was very wonderful — much more difficult
than remembering what was in the books ; and she
was rather in awe of Tom's superiority, for he was
the only person who called her knowledge " stuff,"
and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Tom,
indeed, was of opinion that Maggie was a silly little
thing ; all girls were silly — they couldn't throw a
stone so as to hit anything, couldn't do anything
with a pocket-knife, and were frightened at frogs.
Still he was very fond of his sister, and meant
always to take care of her, make her his house-
keeper, and punish her when she did wrong.

They were on their way to the Bound Pool — that
wonderful fool, which the floods had made a long
while ago : no one knew how deep it was ; and it

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 67

was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a per-
fect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds,
so that the water was only to be seen when you got
close to the brink. The sight of the old favourite
spot always heightened Tom's good-humour, and he
spoke to Maggie in the most amicable whispers, as
he opened the precious basket and prepared their
tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod
into her hand. Maggie thought it probable that
the small fish would come to her hook, and the large
ones to Tom's. But she had forgotten all about the
fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy water,
when Tom said, in a loud whisper, " Look, look,
Maggie!'' and came running to prevent her from
snatching her line away.

Maggie was frightened lest she had been doing
something wrong, as usual, but presently Tom drew
out her line and brought a large tench bouncing on
the gTass.

Tom was excited.

" 0 Magsie ! you little duck I Empty the
basket."

Maggie was not conscious of unusual merit, but
it was enough that Tom called her Magsie, and was
pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her
delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences.

QS THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

when she listened to the light dipping sounds of the
rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the willows
and the reeds and the water had their happy whis-
perings also. Maggie thought it would make a very-
nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never
be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till
Tom told her, but she liked fishing very much.

It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted
along and sat down together, with no thought that
life would ever change much for them : they would
only get bigger and not go to school, and it would
always be like the holidays ; they would always live
together and be fond of each other. And the mill
with its booming — the great chestnut-tree under
which they played at houses — their own little river,
the Eipple, where the banks seemed like home, and
Tom was always seeing the water-rats, while Maggie
gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which
she forgot and dropped afterwards — above all, the
great Floss, along which they wandered with a
sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the
awful Eagre, come up like a hungry monster, or
to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and
groaned like a man — these things would always
be just the same to them. Tom thought people
were at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 69

of the globe; and Maggie, when she read about
Christiana passing " the river over which there is
no bridge," always saw the Floss between the green
pastures by the Great Ash.

Life did change for Tom and Maggie ; and yet
they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts
and loves of these first years would always make
part of their lives. We could never have loved the
earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, — if
it were not the earth where the same flowers come
up again every spring that we used to gather with
our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the
gTass — the same hips and haws on the autumn
hedgerows — the same redbreasts that we used to
call " God's birds," because they did no harm to the
precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet
monotony where everything is known, and loved
because it is known ?

The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with
the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between
me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the
blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet
— what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or
splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill
such deep and delicate fibres within me as this
home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-

70 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful
brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each
with a sort of personality given to it by the capri-
cious hedgerows — such things as these are the
mother tongue of our imagination, the language
that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associa-
tions the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind
them. Our delight in the sunshiae on the deep-
bladed grass to-day, might be no more than the
faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for
the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which
still live in us, and transform our perception into
love.

CHAPTER VI.

THE AUNTS AND UNCLES AEE COMING.

It was Easter week, and Mrs Tulliver's cheese-cakes
were more exquisitely light than usual; "a pufif
0* wind 'ud make *em blow about like feathers,"
Kezia the house-maid said, — feeling proud to live
under a mistress who could make such pastry ; so
that no season or circumstances could have been
more propitious for a family party, even if it had
not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister
Pullet about Tom's going to school

"Fd as lief not invite sister Deane this time,"
said Mrs Tulliver, " for she's as jealous and having
as can be, and 's allays trying to make the worst o'
my poor children to their aunts and uncles."

" Yes, yes," said Mr Tulliver, " ask her to come.
I never hardly get a bit o' talk with Deane now :
we haven't had him this six months. What's it

72 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

matter what she says? — ^my children need be be-
holding to nobody/'

" That's what you allays say, Mr Tulliver ; but
I'm sure there's nobody o' your side, neither aunt
nor uncle, to leave 'em so much as a five-pound note
for a leggicy. And there's sister Glegg, and sister
Pullet too, saving money unknown — for they put by
all their own interest and butter-money too ; their
husbands buy 'em everything/' Mrs Tulliver was a
mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a
little when she has lambs.

" Tchuh ! " said Mr Tulliver. " It takes a big loaf
when there's many to breakfast. What signifies
your sisters' bits o' money when they've got half-
a-dozen newies and nieces to divide it among ? And
your sister Deane won't get 'em to leave all to one,
I reckon, and make the country cry shame on 'em
when they are dead ? "

" I don't know what she won't get 'em to do," said
Mrs Tulliver, " for my children are so awk'ard wi'
their aunts and uncles. Maggie's ten times naughtier
when they come than she is other days, and Tom
doesn't like 'em, bless him — though it's more nat'ral
in a boy than a geU. And there's Lucy Deane 's
such a good child — you may set her on a stool, and
there she'll sit for an hour together, and never ofier

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 73

to get off. I can't help loving the child as if she was
my own ; and I'm sure she's more like my child than
sister Deane's, for she'd allays a very poor colour
for one of our family, sister Deane had."

"Well, weU, if you're fond o' the child, ask her
father and mother to bring her with 'em. And won't
you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too ? and some
o' their children ?

" 0 dear, Mr Tulliver, why, there'd be eight people
besides the children, and I must put two more leaves
i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the din-
ner-service; and you know as well as I do, as my
sisters and your sisters don't suit well together."

"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr Tul-
liver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill.
Few wives were more submissive than Mrs Tulli-
ver on all points imconnected with her family rela-
tions ; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the
Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed — as
much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the
next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been
thought to hold up their heads very high, and no
one was surprised the two eldest had married so
well — not at an early age, for that was not the prac-
tice of the Dodson family. There were particular
ways of doing everything in that family : particular

74 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

ways of bleaching tlie linen, of making the cowslip
wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled
gooseberries ; so that no daughter of that house
could be indifferent to the privilege of having been
born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson.
Funerals were always conducted with peculiar pro-
priety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were
never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the
thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be,
and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When
one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the
rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually
at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering
the most disagreeable truths that correct family
feeling dictated : if the illness or trouble was the
sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the
Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short,
there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to
what was the right thing in household management
and social demeanour, and the only bitter circum-
stance attending this superiority was a painful in-
ability to approve the condiments or the conduct of
families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A
female Dodson, when in "strange houses/' always
ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of
preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 75

tliinking that the preserves had probably begun to
ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There
were some Dodsons less like the family than others
— that was admitted; but in so far as they were
" kin/' they were of necessity better than those who
were " no kin." And it is remarkable that while no
individual Dodson was satisfied with any other in-
dividual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with
him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively.
The feeblest member of a family — the one who has
the least character — is often the merest epitome of
the family habits and traditions ; and Mrs Tulliver
was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-
beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable
as very weak ale : and though she had groaned a
little in her youth under the yoke of her elder
sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sis-
terly reproaches, it was not in Mrs TulHver to be
an innovator on the family ideas. She was thank-
ful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child
who took after her own family, at least in his fea-
tures and complexion, in liking salt and in eating
beans, which a Tulliver never did.

In other respects the true Dodson was partly
latent in Tom, and he was as far from appreciating
his "kin" on the mother's side as Maggie herself;

76 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

generally absconding for the day with a large supply
of the most portable food, when he received timely
warning that his amits and uncles were coming ; a
moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced
the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather
hard on Maggie that Tom always absconded with-
out letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex
are acknowledged to be serious impedimenta in
cases of flight.

On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and
uncles were coming, there were such various and
suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and
jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of
gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether
gloomy : there was hope in the air. Tom and
Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and,
like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof
for a time only by being allowed to carry away a
sufficient load of booty.

" Tom,"' said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs
of the elder-tree, eating their jam puffs, " shall you
run away to-morrow ? "

" No," said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his
puff, and was eyeing the third, which was to be
divided between them — "No, I shan't."

" Why, Tom ? Because Lucy's coming ? "

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 77

"No," said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and
holding it over the puff, with his head on one side
in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem
to divide that very irregular polygon into two
equal parts.) " What do / care about Lucy ? She's
only a girl — she can't play at bandy."

** Is it the tipsy-cake, then ? " said Maggie, exert-
ing her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward
towards Tom with her eyes fixed on the hovering
knife.

" No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's
the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be —
apricot roll-up — 0 my buttons ! "

With this interjection, the knife descended on
the puff and it was in two, but the result was not
satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves
doubtfully. At last he said —

" Shut your eyes, Maggie."

"What for?"

" You never mind what for. Shut *em, when I
tell you."

Maggie obeyed.

"Now, which '11 you have, Maggie — right hand
or left?''

" I'll have that with the jam run out," said
Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom.

78 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may
have it if it comes to you fair, but I shan't give
it you without. Eight or left — you choose, now.
Ha-a-a ! " said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as
Maggie peeped. " You keep your eyes shut, now,
else you shan't have any."

Maggie's power of sacrifice did not extend so far ;
indeed, I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy
the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he
should be pleased with her for giving him the best
bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Tom told
her to "say which," and then she said, "Left-hand."

"You've got it," said Tom, in rather a bitter
tone.

" What ! the bit with the jam run out ? "

" No ; here, take it," said Tom, firmly, handing
decidedly the best piece to Maggie,

" 0, please, Tom, have it : I don't mind — I like
.the other : please take this. ■'

" No, I shan't," said Tom, almost crossly, begin-
ning on his own inferior piece.

Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further,
began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable
relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had finished
first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last
morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 79

more. Maggie didn't know Tom was looking at
her: she was seesawing on the elder bough, lost
to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and
idleness.

" 0, you greedy thing ! " said Tom, when she had
swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of
having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to
have considered this, and made up to him for it.
He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but
one is naturally at a different point of view before
and after cue's own share of puff is swallowed.

Maggie turned quite pale. " 0, Tom, why didn't
you ask me ? "

" I wasn't going to ask you for a bit^ you greedy.
You might have thought of it without, when you
knew I gave you the best bit."

" But I wanted you to have it — you know I did,"
said Maggie, in an injured tone.

" Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair,
like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you
don't punch him for it ; and if you choose the best
with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if
I go halves, I'll go 'em fair — only I wouldn't be a
greedy."

With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down
from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh !"

80 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been
looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agi-
tation of his ears and feelings which could hardly
have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent
dog accepted Tom's attention with as much alacrity
as if he had been treated quite generously.

But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of
misery which distinguishes the human being, and
places him at a proud distance from the most melan-
choly chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave
herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach.
She would have given the world not to have eaten
all her puflp, and to have saved some of it for Tom.
Not but that the pujff was very nice, for Maggie's
palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have
gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom
should call her greedy and be cross with her. And
he had said he wouldn't have it — and she ate it
without thinking — how could she help it? The
tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing
around her for the next ten minutes ; but by that
time resentment began to give way to the desire of
reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to
look for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock
behind the rickyard — where was he likely to be

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 81

gone, and Yap with him ? Maggie ran to the high
bank against the great holly-tree, where she could
see far away towards the Floss. There was Tom ;
but her heart sank again as she saw how far off
he was on his way to the great river, and that he
had another companion besides Yap — naughty Bob
Jakin, whose official, if not natural function, of
frightening the birds, was just now at a standstill.
Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without very
distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Bob's
mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, wlio lived
at a queer round house down the river ; and once,
when Maggie and Tom had wandered thither, there
rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop bark-
ing ; and when Bob's mother came out after it, and
screamed above the barking to tell them not to be
frightened, Maggie thought she was scolding them
fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie
thought it very likely that the round house had
snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom ; for
she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a
little snake that was inside it, and another time he
had a handful of young bats : altogether, he was an
irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical,
judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats ;
VOL. L - F

82 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a com-
panion, he didn't mind about Maggie, and would
never let her go with him.

It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob's
company. How could it be otherwise ? Bob knew,
directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a
swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellowhammer's ; he
found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all
sorts of traps ; he could climb the trees like a
squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting
hedgehogs and stoats ; and he had courage to do
things that were rather naughty, such as making
gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the
sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering incog-
nito. Such qualities in an inferior, who could
always be treated with authority in spite of his
superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fas-
cination for Tom ; and every holiday-time Maggie
was sure to have days of grief because he had gone
off with Bob.

Well I there was no hope for it : he was gone
now, and Maggie could think of no comfort but to
sit down by the holly, or wander by the hedge-
row, and fancy it was all different, refashioning
her little world into just what she should like it
to be.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 83

Maggie's was a troublous life, and this was the
form in which she took her opium.

Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and
the sting of reproach which he had left in her
heart, was hurrying along with Bob, whom he had
met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catch-
ing in a neighbouring bam. Bob knew all about
this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with
an enthusiasm which no one who is not either di-
vested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of
rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person sus-
pected of preternatural wickedness. Bob was really
not so very villanous-looking ; there was even some-
thing agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-
curled border of red hair. But then his trousers
were always rolled up at the knee, for the con-
venience of wading on the slightest notice ; and his
virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably " virtue
in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious
philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit over-
paid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognised
(perhaps because it is seen so seldom):

" I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Bob
in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keep-
ing his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphi-
bious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in.

84 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" He lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg's — ^he
does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere — he
is. I'd sooner be a rot-catcher nor anything— I
would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But
Lors ! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good.
Why, there's that dog, now ! " Bob continued,
pointing with an air of disgust towards Yap, " he's
no more good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it my-
self—I did— at the rot-catchin' i' your feyther's
barn.'*

Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn,
tucked his tail in and shrank close to Tom's leg,
who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the super-
human courage to seem behindhand with Bob in
contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.

" No, no,'' he said, " Yap's no good at sport. I'll
have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when
I've done school"

" Hev ferrets, Measter Tom," said Bob, eagerly, —
" them white ferrets wi' pink eyes ; Lors, you might
catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a
cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight — you might.
That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun
a'most nor seein' two chaps fight — if it wasn't them
chaps as seU cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the
things flew out o* their baskets, an' some o' the cakes

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 85

was smashed . . . But they tasted just as good,"
added Bob, by way of note or addendum, after a
moment's pause.

" But, I say. Bob," said Tom, in a tone of delibera-
tion, " ferrets are nasty biting things — they'll bite a
fellow without being set on."

" Lors ! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap
lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he
hoUows out a good un — he won't."

At this moment a striking incident made the boys
pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging
of some small body in the water from among the
neighbouring bulrushes — if it was not a water-rat.
Bob intimated that he was ready to undergo the
most unpleasant consequences.

" Hoigh ! Yap — hoigh ! there he is," said Tom,
clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its
arrowy course to the opposite bank. " Seize him,
lad, seize him ! "

Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but
declined to plunge, trying whether barking would
not answer the purpose just as well

" Ugh ! you coward 1 " said Tom, and kicked him
over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so
poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained from re-
mark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in

86 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of
change.

" He's none so full now, the Floss isn't/' said Bob,
as he kicked the water up before him, with an
agreeable sense of being insolent to it. " Why,
last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water,
they was."

"Ay, but," said Tom, whose mind was prone to
see an opposition between statements that were
really quite accordant, "but there was a big flood
once, when the Eound Pool was made. / know there
was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows
were all drowned, and the boats went all over the
fields ever such a way."

" / don't care about a flood coming said Bob ;
" I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd
swim — / would."

"Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so
long?" said Tom, his imagination becoming quite
active under the stimulus of that dread. " When
I'm a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house
on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep plenty to
eat in it — rabbits and things — all ready. And then
if the flood came, you know. Bob, I shouldn't mind
. . . And I'd take you in, if I saw you swim-
ming," he added, in the tone of a benevolent patron.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 87

" I aren't frighted/' said Bob, to wliom hunger
did not appear so appalling. "But I'd get in an'
knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted to
eat 'em."

"Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we'd play
at heads-and-tails," said Tom, not contemplating the
possibility that this recreation might have fewer
charms for his mature age. "I'd divide fair to
begin with, and then we'd see who'd win."

"I'n got a halfpenny o' my own," said Bob,
proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his
halfpenny in the air. " Yeads or tails ? "

" Tails," said Tom, instantly fired with the desire
to win.

" It's yeads," said Bob, hastily, snatching up the
halfpenny as it fell

" It wasn't," said Tom, loudly and peremptorily.
" You give me the halfpenny — I've won it fair."

"I shan't," said Bob, holding it tight in his
pocket.

" Then I'll make you — see if I don't," said Tom.

"You can't make me do nothing, you can't,"
said Bob.

"Yes, lean."

" No, you can't."

" I'm master."

88 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" I don't care for you/' '

"But 111 make you care, you cheat/' said Tom,
collaring Bob and shaking him.

" You get out wi' you," said Bob, giving Tom a
kick.

Tom's blood was thoroughly up : he went at Bob
with a lunge and threw him down, but Bob seized
hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Tom down
after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground
for a moment or two, till Tom, pinning Bob down
by the shoulders, thought he had the mastery.

" You say you'll give me the halfpenny now," he
said, with difficulty, while he exerted himself to
keep the command of Bob's arms.

But at this moment. Yap, who had been running
on before, returned barking to the scene of action,
and saw a favourable opportunity for biting Bob's
bare leg not only with impunity but with honour.
The pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising
Bob into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer
tenacity, and, with a new exertion of his force, he
pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But
now Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase
before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Bob,
harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom, and,
almost throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. ' 89

this time Tom was up again, and before Bob had
quite recovered his balance after the act of swinging
Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down, and got
his knees firmly on Bob's chest

" You give me the halfpenny now,"' said Tom.

"Take it,'' said Bob, sulkily.

" No, I shan't take it ; you give it me."

Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and
threw it away from him on the ground.

Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise.

"There the halfpenny lies," he said. "I don't
want your halfpenny ; I wouldn't have kept it. But
you wanted to cheat : I hate a cheat. I shan't go
along with you any more," he added, turning round
homeward, not without casting a regret towards the
rat-catching and other pleasures which he must re-
linquish along with Bob's society.

" You may let it alone, then," Bob called out after
him. " I shall cheat if I like ; there's no fun i' play-
ing else; and I know where there's a goldfinch's
nest, but I'll take care you don't .... An' you're
a nasty fightin' turkey-cock, you are . . . ."

Tom walked on without looking round, and Yap
followed his example, the cold bath having moder-
ated his passions.

" Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drownded dog ;

90 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

I wouldn't own such a dog — I wouldn't," said Bob,
getting louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance.
But Tom was not to be provoked into turning
round, and Bob's voice began to falter a little as
he said,

"An' I'n gi'en you everything, an' showed you
everything, an' niver wanted nothin' from you ....
An' there's your horn-handed knife, then, as you
gi'en me "... . Here Bob flung the knife as far
as he could after Tom's retreating footsteps. But
it produced no effect, except the sense in Bob's
mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now
that knife was gone.

He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate
and disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would
do no good on the ground there — it wouldn't vex
Tom, and pride or resentment was a feeble passion
in Bob's mind compared with the love of a pocket-
knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that
he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's-
horn handle, which they had so often grasped for
mere affection as it lay idle in his pocket. And
there were two blades, and they had just been
sharpened ! What is life without a pocket-knife to
him who has once tasted a higher existence ? No :
to throw the handle after the hatchet is a compre-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 91

liensible act of desperation, but to throw one's
pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in
every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the
mark. So Bob shuiffled back to the spot where the
beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new
pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary
separation, in opening one blade after the other, and
feeling their edge with his well-hardened thumb.
Poor Bob ! he was not sensitive on the point of
honour — not a chivalrous character. That fine
moral aroma would not have been thought much of
by the public opinion of Kennel Yard, which was
the very focus or heart of Bob's world, even if it
could have made itself perceptible there ; yet, for all
that, he was not utterly a sneak and a thief, as our
friend Tom had hastily decided.

But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Ehadaman-
thine personage, having more than the usual share
of boy's justice in him — the justice that desires to
hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt,
and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact
amount of their deserts. Maggie saw a cloud on
his brow when he came home, which checked her
joy at his coming so much sooner than she had ex-
pected, and she dared hardly speak to him as he
stood silently throwing the small gravel-stones into

92 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a rat-
catching when you have set your mind on it. But
if Tom had told his strongest feeling at that moment,
he would have said, " I'd do just the same again."
That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions;
whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done
something different.

CHAPTER VII.

ENTER THE AUNTS AND UNCLES.

The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family,
and Mrs Glegg was not the least handsome of the
sisters. As she sat in Mrs Tulliver's arm-chair, no
impartial observer could have denied that for a
woman of fifty she had a very comely face and figure,
though Tom and Maggie considered their aunt Glegg
as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the
advantages of costume, for though, as she often
observed, no woman had better clothes, it was not
her way to wear her new things out before her old
ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their
best thread-lace in every wash, but when Mrs Glegg
died, it would be found that she had better lace
laid by in the right-hand drawer of her wardrobe,
in the Spotted Chamber, than ever Mrs Wooll of
St Ogg's had bought in her life, although Mrs Wooll
wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her

94 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

curled fronts : Mrs Glegg had doubtless the glossiest
and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as
curls in various degTees of fuzzy laxness ; but to
look out on the week-day world from under a crisp
and glossy front, would be to introduce a most dream-
like and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and
the secular. Occasionally, indeed, Mrs Glegg wore
one of her third-best fronts on a week-day visit, but
not at a sister's house ; especially not at Mrs Tul-
liver's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sisters'
feelings gTcatly by wearing her own hair, though, as
Mrs Glegg observed to Mrs Deane, a mother of a
family, like Bessy, with a husband always going to
law, might have been expected to know better. But
Bessy was always weak !

So if Mrs Glegg's front to-day was more fuzzy
and lax than usual, she had a design under it ; she
intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to
Mrs Tulliver's bunches of blond curls, separated
from each other by a due wave of smoothness on
each side of the painting. Mrs Tulliver had shed
tears several times at sister Glegg's unkindness on
the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the con-
sciousness of looking the handsomer for them,
naturally administered support : Mrs Glegg chose
to wear her bonnet in the house to-day — untied and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 95

tilted slightly, of course — a frequent practice of hers
when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a
severe humour : she didn't know what draughts
there might be in strange houses. For the same
reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached
just to her shoulders, and was very far from meet-
ing across her well-formed chest, while her long
neck was protected by a chevaux-de-frise of miscel-
laneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the
fashions of those times to know how far in the rear
of them Mrs Glegg's slate-coloured silk-gown must
have been ; but from certain constellations of small
yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odour about it
suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable
that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old
enough to have come recently into wear.

Mrs Glegg held her large gold- watch in her hand
with the many-doubled chain round her fingers, and
observed to Mrs Tulliver, who had just returned
from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might
be by other people's clocks and watches, it was gone
half-past twelve by hers.

" I don't know what ails sister Pullet," she con-
tinued. " It used to be the way in our family for
one to be as early as another — I'm sure it was so
in my poor father's time— and not for one sister to

96 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS,

sit half an hour before the others came. But if the
ways o' the family are altered, it shan't be my fault
— ril never be the one to come into a house when
all the rest are going away. I wonder at sister
Deane — she used to be more like me. But if you'll
take my advice, Bessy, you'll put the dinner forrard
a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late
as ought to ha' known better."

" O dear, there's no fear but what they'll be all
here in time, sister," said Mrs Tulliver, in her mild-
peevish tone. " The dinner won't be ready till half-
past one. But if it's long for you to wait, let me
fetch you a cheese-cake and a glass o' wine."

" Well, Bessy ! " said Mrs Glegg, with a bitter
smile, and a scarcely perceptible toss of her head,
" I should ha' thought you'd know your own sister
better. I never did eat between meals, and I'm
not going to begin. Not but what I hate that non-
sense of having your dinner at half-past one, when
you might have it at one. You was never brought
up in that way, Bessy."

" Why, Jane, what can I do ? Mr Tulliver doesn't
like his dinner before two o'clock, but I put it half
an hour earlier because o' you."

" Yes, yes, I know how it is wi' husbands — they're
for putting everything off— they'll put the dinner

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 97

off till after tea, if they Ve got wives as are weak
enough to give in to such work ; but it's a pity for
you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o'
mind. It'll be well if your children don't suffer
for it. And I hope you've not gone and got a
great dinner for us — going to expense, for your
sisters as 'ud sooner eat a crust o' dry bread nor
help to ruin you with extravagance. I wonder you
don't take pattern by your sister Deane — she's far
more sensible. And here you've got two children
to provide for, and your husband's spent your for-
tin i' going to law, and's like to spend his own
too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of
for the kitchen," Mrs Glegg added, in a tone of
emphatic protest, "and a plain pudding, with a
spoonful o' sugar and no spice, 'ud be far more be-
coming."

With sister Glegg in this humour, there was a
cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs Tulliver never
went the length of quarrelling with her, any more
than a waterfowl that puts out its leg in a depre-
cating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy
who throws stones. But this point of the dinner
was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs
Tulliver could make the same answer she had often
made before.

VOL. L ,G

98 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Mr Tulliver says lie always will have a good
dinner for his friends while he can pay for it," she
said, " and he's a right to do as he likes in his own
house, sister."

" Well, Bessy, I can't leave your children enough,
out o' my savings, to keep 'em from ruin. And you
mustn't look to having any o' Mr Glegg's money, for
it's well if I don't go first — ^he comes of a long-
lived family ; and if he was to die and leave me well
for my life, he'd tie all the money up to go back to
his own kin."

The sound of wheels while Mrs Glegg was speak-
ing was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs
Tulliver, who hastened out to receive sister Pullet —
it must be sister Pullet, because the sound was that
of a four-wheel.

Mrs Glegg tossed her head and looked rather
sour about the mouth at the thought of the " four-
wheel." She had a strong opinion on that subject.

Sister Pullet was in tears when the one-horse
chaise stopped before Mrs Tulliver's door, and it
was apparently requisite that she should shed a few
more before getting out, for though her husband
and Mrs Tulliver stood ready to support her, she sat
still and shook her head sadly, as she looked through
her tears at the vague distance.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 99

"Why, whativer is the matter, sister?" said Mrs
Tulliver. She was not an imaginative woman, but
it occurred to her that the large toilet-glass in sister
Pullet's best bedroom was possibly broken for the
second time.

There was no reply but a further shake of the
head, as Mrs Pullet slowly rose and got down
from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr
Pullet to see that he was guarding her handsome
silk dress from injury. Mr Pullet was a small man
with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin
lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white
cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on
some higher principle than that of mere personal ease.
He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-
looking wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant
mantle, and large be-feathered and be-ribboned bon-
net, as a small fishing-smack bears to a brig with
all its sails spread.

It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of
the complexity introduced into the emotions by a
high state of civilisation — the sight of a fashion-
ably drest female in grief. Prom the sorrow of a
Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram
sleeves, with several bracelets on each arm, an
architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon-strings —

100 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

what a long series of gradations ! In the enlight-
ened child of civilisation the abandonment charac-
teristic of grief is checked and varied in the subtlest
manner, so as to present an interesting problem to
the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and
eyes half-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to
walk with a too devious step through a door-place,
she might crush her buckram sleeves too, and the
deep consciousness of this possibility produces a
composition of forces by which she takes a line that
just clears the doorpost. Perceiving that the tears
are hurr3dng fast, she unpins her strings and throws
them languidly backward — a touching gesture, in-
dicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in
future dry moments when cap -strings will once
more have a charm. As the tears subside a little,
and with her head leaning backward at the angle
that will not injure her bonnet, she endures that
terrible moment when grief, which has made all
things else a weariness, has itself become weary ;
she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and ad-
justs their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity
which would be gratifying to her mind if it were
once more in a calm and healthy state.

Mrs Pullet brushed each doorpost with great
nicety, about the latitude of her shoulders (at that

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 101

period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed
eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across
the shoulders), and having done that, sent the
muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she
advanced into the parlour where Mrs Glegg was
seated,

" Well, sister, you're late ; what's the matter ? "
said Mrs Glegg, rather sharply, as they shook hands.

Mrs Pullet sat down — lifting up her mantle care-
fully behind, before she answered, —

" She's gone/' unconsciously using an impressive
figure of rhetoric.

" It isn't the glass this time, then," thought Mrs
Tulliver.

" Died the day before yesterday," continued Mrs
Pullet ; " an' her legs was as thick as my body,"
she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. " They'd
tapped her no end o' times, and the water — they say
you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked."

" Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, who-
iver she may be," said Mrs Glegg with the prompti-
tude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and
decided ; '*' but I can't think who you're talking of,
for my part."

"But / know," said Mrs Pullet, sighing and
shaking her head ; " and there isn't another such a

102 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

dropsy in the parish. I know as it's old Mrs Sutton
o' the Twentylands/'

" Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor mugh acquaint-
ance as I've ever heared of," said Mrs Glegg, who
always cried just as much as was proper when any-
thing happened to her own " kin," but not on other
occasions.

" She's so much acquaintance as IVe seen her legs
when they was like bladders. . . . And an old
lady as had doubled her money over and over again,
and kept it all in her own management to the last,
and had her pocket with her keys in under her
pillow constant. There isn't many old ^arish'ners
like her, I doubt."

" And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud
fill a waggon," observed Mr Pullet.

" Ah," sighed Mrs Pullet, " she'd another com-
plaint ever so many years before she had the dropsy,
and the doctors couldn't make out what it was.
And she said to me, when I went to see her last
Christmas, she said, ' Mrs Pullet, if iver you have
the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' She did say so,"
added Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry bitterly again ;
"those were her very words. And she's to be
buried o' Saturday, and Pullet's bid to the funeral."

" Sophy," said Mrs Glegg, unable any longer to

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 103

contain her spirit of rational remonstrance — " Sophy,
I wonder at you, fretting and injuring your health
about people as don't belong to you. Your poor
father never did so, nor your aunt Prances neither,
nor any o* the family as I ever beared of You
couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd beared as
our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making
his wiU."

Mrs Pullet was silent, having to finish her crying,
and rather flattered than indignant at being up-
braided for crying too much. It was not everybody
who could afford to cry so much about their neigh-
bours who had left them nothing ; but Mrs Pullet
had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure
and money to carry her crying and everything else
to the highest pitch of respectability.

" Mrs Sutton didn't die without making her will,
though,'' said Mr Pullet, with a confused sense that
he was saying something to sanction his wife's tears ;
" ours is a rich parish, but they say there's nobody
else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs
Sutton. And she's left no leggicies, to speak on —
left it all in a lump to her husband's newy."

" There wasn't much good i' being so rich,
then," said Mrs Glegg, " if she'd got none but hus-
band's kin to leave it to. It's poor work when

104 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

that's all you've got to pincli yourself for ; — not as
I'm one o' those as 'ud- like to die without leaving
more money out at interest than other folks had
reckoned. But it's a poor tale when it must go out
o' your own family.''

" I'm sure, sister," said Mrs Pullet, who had re-
covered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it
carefully, " it's a nice sort o' man as Mrs Sutton has
left her money to, for he's troubled with the asthmy,
and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock. He
told me about it himself — as free as could be — one
Sunday when he came to our church. He wears a
hare-skin on his chest, and has a trembling in his
talk — quite a gentleman sort o' man. I told him
there wasn't many months in the year as I wasn't
imder the doctor's hands. And he said, ' Mrs Pullet,
I can feel for you/ That was what he said — the
very words. Ah ! " sighed Mrs Pullet, shaking her
head at the idea that there were but few who could
enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and
white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and
weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shill-
ing, and draughts at eighteenpence. " Sister, I may
as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you
see as the cap-box was put out ? " she added, turning
to her husband.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 105

Mr Pullet, by an unaccountable lapse of memory,
had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken
conscience, to remedy the omission.

" They'll bring it up-stairs, sister," said Mrs Tul-
liver, wishing to go at once, lest Mrs Glegg should
begin to explain her feelings about Sophy's being
the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution
with doctor's stuff.

Mrs Tulliver was fond of going up-stairs with her
sister Pullet, and looking thoroughly at her cap
before she put it on her head, and discussing mil-
linery in general. This was part of Bessy's weak-
ness that stirred Mrs Glegg's sisterly compassion :
Bessy went far too well drest, considering ; and
she was too proud to dress her child in the good
clothing her sister Glegg gave her from the primeval
strata of her wardrobe ; it was a sin and a shame
to buy anything to dress that child, if it wasn't a
pair of shoes. In this particular, however, Mrs
Glegg did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs
Tulliver had really made great efforts to induce
Maggie to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk
frock made out of her aunt Glegg's, but the results
had been such that Mrs Tulliver was obliged to
bury them in her maternal bosom ; for Maggie,
declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had

106 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

taken an opportunity of basting it together with the
roast-beef the first Sunday she wore it, and, finding
this scheme answer, she had subsequently pumped
on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to give
it a general resemblance to a sage cheese garnished
with withered lettuces. I must urge in excuse for
Maggie, that Tom had laughed at her in the bonnet,
and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Pul-
let, too, made presents of clothes, but these were
always pretty enough to please Maggie as well as
her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs TuUiver cer-
tainly preferred her sister Pullet, not without a re-
turn of preference ; but Mrs Pullet was sorry Bessy
had those naughty awkward children ; she would
do the best she could by them, but it was a pity
they weren't as good and as pretty as sister Deane's
child. Maggie and Tom, on their part, thought
their aunt Pullet tolerable, chiefly because she was
not their aunt Glegg. Tom always declined to go
more than once, during his holidays, to see either of
them : both his uncles tipped him that once, of
course ; but at his aunt Pullet's there were a great
many toads to pelt in the cellar-area, so that he
preferred the visit to her. Maggie shuddered at
the toads, and dreamed of them horribly, but she
liked her imcle Pullet's musical snuff-box. Still, it

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 107

was agreed by the sisters, in Mrs Tulliver's absence,
that the Tulliver bipod did not mix well with the
Dodson blood ; that, in fact, poor Bessy's children
were TuUivers, and that Tom, notwithstanding he
had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as
" contrairy " as his father. As for Maggie, she was
the picture of her aunt Moss, Mr Tulliver's sister, —
a large-boned woman, who had married as poorly as
could be ; had no china, and had a husband who
had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs
Pullet was alone with ]\Irs Tulliver up-stairs, the
remarks were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs
Glegg, and they agreed, in confidence, that there
was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane
would come out next. But their tete-cb-tete was
curtailed by the appearance of Mrs Deane with little
Lucy ; and Mrs Tulliver had to look on with a silent
pang while Lucy's blond curls were adjusted. It
was quite unaccountable that Mrs Deane, the thinnest
and sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have
had this child, who might have been taken for Mrs
Tulliver's any day. And Maggie always looked
twice as dark as usual when she was by the side
of Lucy.

She did to-day, when she and Tom came in from
the garden with their father and their uncle Glegg.

108 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Maggie had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly,
and, coming in with her hair rcyugh as well as out of
curl, rushed at once to Lucy, who was standing by
her mother's knee. Certainly the contrast between the
cousins was conspicuous, and, to superficial eyes, was
very much to the disadvantage of Maggie, though a
connoisseur might have seen " points " in her which
had a higher promise for maturity than Lucy's natty
completeness. It was like the contrast between a
rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten.
Lucy put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be
kissed : everything about her was neat — her little round
neck, with the row of coral beads ; her little straight
nose, not at all snubby ; her little clear eyebrows,
rather darker than her curls, to match her hazel
eyes, which looked up with shy pleasure at Maggie,
taller by the head, though scarcely a year older.
Maggie always looked at Lucy with delight. She
was fond of fancying a world where the people never
got any larger than children of their own age, and
she made the queen of it just like Lucy, with a
little crown on her head and a little sceptre in her
hand .... only the queen was Maggie herself in
Lucy's form.

"0 Lucy," she burst out, after kissing her, "you'll
stay with Tom and me, won't you ? 0 kiss her, Tom."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 109

Tom, too, had come up to Lucy, but he was not
going to kiss her — no ; he came up to her with
Maggie because it seemed easier, on the whole, than
saying, " How do you do ? " to all those aunts and
uncles : he stood looking at nothing in particular,
with the blushing, awkward air and semi -smile
which are common to shy boys when in company
— very much as if they had come into the world by
mistake, and found it in a degree of undress that
was quite embarrassing.

" Heyday !" said aunt Glegg, with loud emphasis.
" Do little boys and gells come into a room without
taking notice o' their uncles and aunts ? That wasn't
the way when / was a little gell."

"Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my
dears," said Mrs Tulliver, looking anxious and melan-
choly. She wanted to whisper to Maggie a command
to go and have her hair brushed.

" Well, and how do you do ? And I hope you're
good children, are you ? " said aunt Glegg, in the
same loud emphatic way, as she took their hands,
hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their
cheeks much against their desire. " Look up, Tom,
look up. Boys as go to boarding-schools should
hold their heads up. Look at me now." Tom declined
that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his

110 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

hand away. "Put your hair behind your ears,
Maggie, and keep your frock on your shoulder.''

Aunt Glegg always spoke to them in this loud
emphatic way, as if she considered them deaf, or
perhaps rather idiotic : it was a means, she thought, of
making them feel that they were accountable crea-
tures, and might be a salutary check on naughty
tendencies. Bessy's children were so spoiled —
they'd need have somebody to make them feel their
duty.

"Well, my dears,'' said aunt Pullet, in a com-
passionate voice, "you grow wonderful fast. I
doubt they'll outgrow their strength," she added,
looking over their heads, with a melancholy expres-
sion, at their mother. " I think the gell has too
much hair. I'd have it thinned and cut shorter,
sister, if I was you : it isn't good for her health. It's
that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn't wonder.
Don't you think so, sister Deane ?"

" I can't say, I'm sure, sister," said Mrs Deane,
shutting her lips close again, and looking at Maggie
with a critical eye.

" No, no," said Mr TuUiver, " the child's healthy
enough — there's nothing ails her. There's red
wheat as well as white, for that matter, and some
like the dark grain best. But it 'ud be as well if

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Ill

Bessy 'ud have the child's hair cut, so as it 'ud lie
smooth."

A dreadful resolve was gathering in Maggie's
breast, but it was arrested by the desire to know
from her aunt Deane whether she would leave Lucy
behind: aunt Deane would hardly ever let Lucy
come to see them. After various reasons for refusal,
Mrs Deane appealed to Lucy herself.

" You wouldn't like to stay behind without
mother, should you, Lucy ? "

" Yes, please, mother," said Lucy, timidly, blush-
ing very pink all over her little neck

" Well done, Lucy ! Let her stay, Mrs Deane,
let her stay,'* said Mr Deane, a large but alert-look-
ing man, with a type of physique to be seen in all
ranks of English society — bald crown, red whiskers,
full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness.
You may see noblemen like Mr Deane, and you
may see grocers or day-labourers like him ; but the
keenness of his brown eyes was less common than
his contour. He held a silver snuff-box very tightly
in his hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch
with Mr TuUiver, whose box was only silver-
mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between
them that Mr Tulliver wanted to exchange snuff-
boxes also. ' Mr Deane's box had been given him by

112 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

the superior partners in the firm to which he be-
longed, at the same time that they gave him a share
in the business, in acknowledgment of his valuable
services as manager. No man was thought more
highly of in St Ogg's than Mr Deane, and some
persons were even of opinion that Miss Susan Dod-
son, who was held to have made the worst match of
all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a
better carriage, and live in a better house, even than
her sister Pullet. There was no knowing where a
man would stop, who had got his foot into a great
mill-owning, ship-owning business like that of Guest
& Co., with a banking concern attached. And Mrs
Deane, as her intimate female friends observed, was
proud and " having " enough : she wouldn't let
her husband stand still in the world for want of
spurring.

" Maggie," said Mrs Tulliver, beckoning Maggie
to her, and whispering in her ear, as soon as this
point of Lucy's staying was settled, "go and get your
hair brushed — do, for shame. I told you not to
come in without going to Martha first ; you know
I did."

" Tom, come out with me,'' whispered Maggie,
pulling his sleeve as she passed him ; and Tom fol-
lowed willingly enough.

THE MILL ON" THE FLOSS. 113

" Come up-stairs with me, Tom," she whispered
when they were outside the door. " There's some-
thing I want to do before dinner.'*

" There's no time to play at anything before
dinner,'' said Tom, whose imagination was impatient
of any intermediate prospect.

" 0, yes, there is time for this — do come, Tom."

Tom followed Maggie up-stairs into her mother's
room, and saw her go at once to a drawer, from
which she took out a large pair of scissors.

" What are they for, Maggie ?" said Tom, feeling
his curiosity awakened.

Maggie answered by seizing her front locks and
cutting them straight across the middle of her
forehead.

" 0, my buttons, Maggie, you'll catch it !" ex-
claimed Tom ; " you'd better not cut any more off."

Snip ! went the great scissors again while Tom
was speaking ; and he couldn't help feeling it was
rather good fun : Maggie would look so queer.

" Here, Tom, cut it behind for me," said Maggie,
excited by her own daring, and anxious to finish
the deed.

" You'll catch it, you know/' said Tom, nodding
his head in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a
little as he took the scissors.

VOL. L H

114 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" Never mind — ^make haste ! '' said Maggie, giv-
ing a little stamp with her foot. Her cheeks were
quite flushed.

The black locks were so thick — nothing could be
more tempting to a lad who had already tasted the
forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony's mane. I
speak to those who know the satisfaction of making
a pair of shears meet through a duly resisting mass
of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then
another and another, and the hinder -locks fell
heavily on the fl.oor, and Maggie stood cropped in a
jagged uneven manner, but with a sense of clear-
ness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a
wood into the open plain.

" 0, Maggie," said Tom, jumping round her, and
slapping his knees as he laughed, " 0, my buttons,
what a queer thing you look ! Look at yourself in
the glass — you look like the idiot we throw our
nutshells to at school/'

Maggie felt an unexpected pang. She had thought
beforehand chiefly of her own deliverance from her
teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and some-
thing also of the triumph she should have over her
mother and her aunts by this very decided course of
action : she didn't want her hair to look pretty —
that was out of the question — she only wanted

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 115

people to think her a clever little girl, and not to
find fault with her. But now, when Tom began to
laugh at her, and say she was like the idiot, the
affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the
glass, and still Tom laughed and clapped his hands,
and Maggie's flushed cheeks began to pale, and her
lips to tremble a little.

*' 0 Maggie, youll have to go down to dinner
directly," said Tom. " 0 my !''

" Don't laugh at me, Tom," said Maggie, in a pas-
sionate tone, with an outburst of angiy tears, stamp-
ing, and giving him a push.

"Now, then, spitfire!" said Tom. "What did
you cut it off for, then ? I shall go down : I can
smell the dinner going in."

He hurried down-stairs and left poor Maggie to
that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost
an everyday experience of her small soul. She
could see clearly enough, now the thing was done,
that it was veiy foolish, and that she should have to
hear and think more about her hair than ever ; for
Maggie rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse,
and then saw not only their consequences, but what
would have happened if they had not been done,
with all the detail and exao-orerated circumstance of
an active imagination. Tom never did the same

116 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

sort of foolish things as Maggie, having a wonder-
ful, instinctive discernment of what would turn to
his advantage or disadvantage ; and so it happened,
that though he was much more wilful and inflexible
than Maggie, his mother hardly ever called him
naughty. But if Tom did make a mistake of that
sort, he espoused it, and stood by it: he "didn't
mind." If he broke the lash of his father's gig- whip
by lashing the gate, he couldn't help it — the whip
shouldn't have got caught in the hinge. If Tom
Tulliver whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that
the whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable
act, but that he, Tom Tulliver, was justifiable in
whipping that particular gate, and he wasn't going
to be sorry. But Maggie, as she stood crying before
the glass, felt it impossible that she should go down
to dinner and endure the severe eyes and severe
words of her aunts, while Tom, and Lucy, and
Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father
and her uncles, would laugh at her, — for if Tom had
laughed at her, of course every one else w^ould ; and
if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat
with Tom and Lucy, and had the apricot pudding
and the custard ! What could she do but sob ?
She sat as helpless and despairing among her black
locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 117

trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn
mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead
loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less
bitter to Maggie — perhaps it was even more bitter
— than what we are fond of calling antithetically
the real troubles of mature life. " Ah, my child,
you will have real troubles to fret about by-and-
by," is the consolation we have almost all of us
had administered to us in our childhood, and have
repeated to other children since we have been grown
up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, stand-
ing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when
we lost sight of our moUier or nurse in some strange
place ; but we can no longer recall the poignancy
of that moment and weep over it, as we do over
the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago.
Every one of those keen moments has left its trace,
and lives in us still, but such traces have blent
themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of
our youth and manhood ; and so it comes that we
can look on at the troubles of our children with a
smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is
there any one who can recover the experience of his
childhood, not merely with a memory of what he
did and what happened to him, of what he liked
and disliked when he was in frock and trousers.

118 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

but with an intimate penetration, a revived con-
sciousness of what he felt then — when it was so
long from one Midsummer to another? what he
felt when his schoolfellows shut him out of their
game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of
mere wilfulness ; or on a rainy day in the holidays,
when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and
fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into
defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness ; or when
his mother absolutely refused to let him have a
tailed coat that "half,'' although every other boy
of his age had gone into tails already ? Surely if
we could recall that early* bitterness, and the dim
guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of
life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should
not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.

" Miss Maggie, you're to come down this minute,"
said Eezia, entering the room hurriedly. " Lawks !
what have you been a-doing ? I niver see such a
fright."

" Don't, Kezia,'' said Maggie, angrily. " Go
away ! "

" But I tell you, you're to come down, Miss, this
minute : your mother says so," said Kezia, going
up to Maggie and taking her by the hand to raise
her from the floor.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 119

" Get aTvay, Kezia ; I don't want any dinner,"
said Maggie, resisting Kezia's arm, " I shan't
come."

" 0, well, I can't stay. IVe got to wait at din-
ner," said Kezia, going out again,

" Maggie, you little silly," said Tom, peeping into
the room ten minutes after, " why don't you come
and have your dinner ? There's lots o' goodies, and
mother says you're to coma What are you crying
for, you little spooney ? "

0, it was dreadful ! Tom was so hard and uncon-
cerned : if he had been crying on the floor, Maggie
would have cried too. And there was the dinner,
so nice ; and she was so hungry. It was very
bitter.

But Tom was not altogether hard. He was not
inclined to cry, and did not feel that Maggie's grief
spoiled his prospect of the sweets ; but he went and
put his head near her, and said in a lower, com-
forting tone —

" Won't you come, then, Magsie ? Shall I bring
you a bit o' pudding when I've had mine? . . .
and a custard and things ? "

" Ye-e-es," said Maggie, beginning to feel life a
little more tolerable.

"Very well," said Tom, going away. But he

120 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

turned again at the door and said, "But you'd
better come, you know. There's the dessert — nuts,
you know — and cowslip wine."

Maggie's tears had ceased, and she looked re-
flective as Tom left her. His good-nature had
taken off the keenest edge of her suffering, and
nuts with cowslip wine began to assert their legiti-
mate influence.

Slowly she rose from amongst her scattered locks,
and slowly she made her way down- stairs. Then
she stood leanino^ with one shoulder against the
frame of the dining-parlour door, peeping in when
it was ajar. She saw Tom and Lucy with an empty
chair between them, and there were the custards on
a side-table — it was too much. She slipped in and
went towards the empty chair. But she had no
sooner sat down than she repented, and wished her-
self back again.

Mrs Tulliver gave a little scream as she saw her,
and felt such a " tui'n" that she dropt the large gravy-
spoon into the dish with the most serious results to
the table-cloth. For Kezia had not betrayed the
reason of Maggie's refusal to come down, not liking
to give her mistress a shock in the moment of carv-
ing, and Mrs Tulliver thought there was nothing
worse in question than a fit of perverseness, which

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 121

was inflicting its own punishment by depriving
Magme of half her dinner.

Mrs Tulliver's scream made all eyes turn towards
the same point as her own, and Maggie's cheeks and
ears began to burn, while uncle Glegg, a kind-look-
ing, white-haired old gentleman, said —

" Hey-day ! what little gell's this — why, I don't
know her. Is it some little gell you've picked up in
the road, Kezia ? "

" Why, she's gone and cut her hair herself," said
Mr Tulliver in an under-tone to Mr Deane, laugh-
ing with much enjoyment. "Did you ever know
such a little hussy as it is ? "

" Why, little miss, you've made yourself look very
fanny," said uncle Pullet, and perhaps he never in
his life made an observation which was felt to be so
lacerating.

" Eie, for shame ! " said aunt Glegg, in her loud-
est, severest tone of reproof. "Little gells as cut
their own hair should be whipped and fed on bread-
and-water — not come and sit down with their aunts
and uncles."

"Ay, ay," said uncle Glegg, meaning to give a
playful turn to this denunciation, " she must be sent
to jail, I think, and they'll cut the rest of her hair
off there, and make it all even."

122 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" She's more like a gypsy nor ever," said aunt
Pullet, in a pitying tone; "it's very bad luck,
sister, as the gell should be so brown — the boy's
fair enough. I doubt it'll stand in her way i' life,
to be so brown."

" She's a naughty child, as '11 break her mother's
heart," said Mrs Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

Maggie seemed to be listening to a chorus of re-
proach and derision. Her first flush came from
anger, which gave her a transient power of defiance,
and Tom thought she was braving it out, supported
by the recent appearance of the pudding and custard.
Under this impression, he whispered, "0 my ! Maggie,
I told you you'd catch it." He meant to be friendly,
but Maggie felt convinced that Tom was rejoicing
in her ignominy. Her feeble power of defiance left
her in an instant, her heart swelled, and, getting up
from her chair, she ran to her father, hid her face
on his shoulder, and burst out into loud sobbing.

" Come, come, my wench," said her father, sooth-
ingly, putting his arm round her, " never mind ; you
was i' the right to cut it off if it plagued you ; give
over crying : father '11 take your part."

Delicious words of tenderness ! Maggie never for-
got any of these moments when her father " took
her part ; " she kept them in her heart, and thought

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 123

of them long years after, when every one else said
that her father had done very ill by his children.

" How your husband does spoil that child, Bessy ! "
said Mrs Glegg, in a loud " aside," to Mrs Tulliver.
" It'll be the ruin of her, if you don't take care.
My father niver brought his children up so, else
we should ha' been a different sort o' family to
what we are/'

Mrs Tulliver's domestic sorrows seemed at this
moment to have reached the point at which insensi-
bility begins. She took no notice of her sister's re-
mark, but threw back her cap-strings and dispensed
the pudding, in mute resignation.

With the dessert there came entire deliverance for
Maggie, for the children were told they might have
their nuts and wine in the summer-house, since the
day was so mild, and they scampered out among the
budding bushes of the garden with the alacrity of
small animals getting from under a burning-glass.

Mrs Tulliver had her special reason for this per-
mission : now the dinner was despatched, and every
one's mind disengaged, it was the right moment
to communicate Mr Tulliver's intention concerning

o

Tom, and it would be as well for Tom himself to be
absent. The children were used to hear themselves
talked of as freely as if they were birds, and could

124 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

understand nothing, however they might stretch
their necks and listen ; but on this occasion Mrs
TuUiver manifested an unusual discretion, because
she had recently had evidence that the going to
school to a clergyman was a sore point with Tom,
who looked at it as very much on a par with going
to school to a constable. Mrs Tulliver had a sigh-
ing sense that her husband would do as he liked,
whatever sister Glegg said, or sister Pullet either,
but at least they would not be able to say, if the
thing turned out ill, that Bessy had fallen in with
her husband's folly without letting her own friends
know a word about it.

"Mr Tulliver,'^ she said, interrupting her hus-
band in his talk with Mr Deane, " it's time now to
tell the children's aunts and uncles what you're
thinking of doing with Tom, isn't it ?"

"Very well," said Mr Tulliver, rather sharply,
" IVe no objections to tell anybody what I mean to
do with him. I've settled," he added, looking to-
wards Mr Glegg and Mr Deane — "I've settled to
send him to a Mr Stelling, a parson, down at King's
Lorton, there — an uncommon clever fellow, I under-
stand— as '11 put him up to most things."

"There was a rustling demonstration of surprise in
the company, such as you may have observed in a

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 125

country congregation when they hear an allusion
to their week-day affairs from the pulpit. It was
equally astonishing to the aunts and uncles to find
a parson introduced into Mr Tulliver's family
arrangements. As for uncle Pullet, he could hardly
have been more thoroughly obfuscated if Mr Tul-
liver had said that he was going to send Tom to
the Lord Chancellor : for uncle Pullet belonged to
that extinct class of British yeomen who, dressed in
good broadcloth, paid high rates and taxes, went to
church, and ate a particularly good dinner on Sun-
day, without dreaming that the British constitution
in Church and State had a traceable origin any more
than the solar system and the fixed stars. It is
melancholy, but true, that Mr Pullet had the most
confused idea of a bishop as a sort of a baronet,
who might or might not be a clergyman ; and as
the rector of his own parish was a man of high
family and fortune, the idea that a clergyman could
be a schoolmaster was too remote from Mr Pullet's
experience to be readily conceivable. I know it is
difiicult for people in these instructed times to
believe in uncle Pullet's ignorance ; but let them
reflect on the remarkable results of a great natural
faculty under favouring circumstances. And uncle
Pullet had a great natural faculty for ignorance.

126 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

He was the first to give utterance to liis astonisli-
ment.

"Why, what can you be going to send him to
a parson for?" he said, with an amazed twinkling
in his eyes, looking at Mr Glegg and Mr Deane, to
see if they showed any signs of comprehension.

" Why, because the parsons are the best school-
masters, by what I can make out," said poor Mr
Tulliver, who, in the maze of this puzzling world,
laid hold of any clue with great readiness and
tenacity. "Jacobs at th' academy's no parson,
and he's done very bad by the boy ; and I made
up my mind, if I sent him to school again, it should
be to somebody different to Jacobs. And this
Mr Stelling, by what I can make out, is the sort
o' man I want. And I mean my boy to go to him
at Midsummer," he concluded, in a tone of decision,
tapping his snuff-box and taking a pinch.

" You'll have to pay a swinging half-yearly bill
then, eh, Tulliver? The clergymen have highish
notions, in general," said Mr Deane, taking snuff
vigorously, as he always did when wishing to main-
tain a neutral position.

" Wliat ! do you think the parson '11 teach him to
know a good sample o' wheat when he sees it, neigh-
bour Tulliver?" said Mr Glegg, who was fond of his

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 127

jest ; and, having retired from business, felt that it
was not only allowable but becoming in him to take
a playful view of things.

" Why, you see, IVe got a plan i' my head about
Tom," said Mr Tulliver, pausing after that state-
ment and lifting up his glass.

"Well, if I may be allowed to speak, and it's
seldom as I am," said Mrs Olegg, with a tone of
bitter meaning, " I should like to know what good
is to come to the boy, by bringin' him up above his
fortin."

"Why," said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs
Glegg, but at the male part of his audience, " you
see, IVe made up my mind not to bring Tom up to
my own business. I've had my thoughts about it
all along, and I made up my mind by what I saw
with Garnett and his son. I mean to put him to
some business, as he can go into without capital,
and I want to give him an eddi cation as he'll be even
wi' the lawyers and folks, and put me up to a notion
now an' then/'

Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound
with closed lips, that smiled in mingled pity and scorn.

" It 'ud be a fine deal better for some people," she
said, after that introductory note, " if they'd let the
lawyers alone."

128 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Is he at the head of a grammar school, then,
this clergyman — such as that at Market Bewley V
said Mr Deane.

"No— nothing o' that," said Mr Tulliver. "He
won't take more than two or three pupils — and so
he'll have the more time to attend to 'em, you
know/'

" Ah, and get his eddication done the sooner :
they can't learn much at a time when there's so
many of 'em," said uncle Pullet, feeling that he
was getting quite an insight into this difi&cult
matter.

"But he'll want the more pay, I doubt," said Mr
Glegg.

" Ay, ay, a cool hundred a-year — that's all," said
Mr Tulliver, with some pride .at his own spirited
course. " But then, you know, it's an invest-
ment; Tom's eddication 'ull be so much capital
to him."

" Ay, there's something in that," said Mr Glegg.
" Well, well, neighbour Tulliver, you may be right,
you may be right :

* When land is gone and money's spent,
Then learning is most excellent.'

I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a
window at Buxton. But us that have got no learn-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 129

ing had better keep our money, eh, neighbour
Pullet?" Mr Glegg rubbed his knees and looked
very pleasant.

"Mr Glegg, I wonder at you," said his wife.
" It's very unbecoming in a man o' your age and
belongings."

"What's unbecoming, Mrs G.?" said Mr Glegg,
winking pleasantly at the company. " My new blue
coat as I've got on?"

" I pity your weakness, Mr Glegg. I say it's un-
becoming to be making a joke when you see your
own kin going headlongs to ruin."

" If you mean me by that," said Mr Tulliver,
considerably nettled, " you needn't trouble yourself
to fret about me. I can manage my own afiaii's
without troubling other folks."

"Bless me," said Mr Deane, judiciously intro-
ducing a new idea, " why, now I come to think of
it, somebody said Wakem was going to send his son
— the deformed lad — to a clergyman, didn't they,
Susan ?" (appealing to his wife).

"I can give no account of it, I'm sure," said Mrs
Deane, closing her lips very tightly again. Mrs
Deane was not a woman to take part in a scene
where missiles were flying.

" Well," said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more

VOL. L I

130 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

clieerfuUy that Mrs Glegg might see he didn't mind
her, "if Wakem thinks o' sending his son to a
clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake f
sending Tom to one. Wakem's as big a scoundrel
as Old Harry ever made, but he knows the length
of every man's foot he's got to deal with. Ay, ay,
tell me who's Wakem's butcher, and I'll tell you
where to get your meat/'

"But lawyer "Wakem's son's got a hump-back,'*
said Mrs Pullet, who felt as if the whole business
had a funereal aspect; " it's more nat'ral to send him
to a clergyman."

" Yes," said Mr Glegg, interpreting Mrs Pullet's
observation with erroneous plausibility, " you must
consider that, neighbour TuUiver; Wakem's son
isn't likely to follow any business. Wakem 'ull
make a gentleman of him, poor fellow."

" Mr Glegg," said Mrs G., in a tone which im-
plied that her indignation would fizz and ooze a
little, though she was determined to keep it corked
up, " you'd far better hold your tongue. Mr Tulli-
ver doesn't want to know your opinion nor mine
neither. There's folks in the world as know better
than everybody else."

" Why, I should think that's you, if we're to trust

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 131

your own tale," said Mr Tulliver, beginning to boil
up again.

" 0, 1 say nothing," said Mrs Glegg, sarcastically.
" My advice has never been asked, and I don't give
it."

" It'll be the first time, then," said Mr TulHver.
" It's the only thing you're over-ready at giving."

" I've been over-ready at lending, then, if I haven't
been over-ready at giving," said Mrs Glegg. "There's
folks I've lent money to, as perhaps I shall repent
o' lending money to kin."

" Come, come, come," said Mr Glegg, soothingly.
But Mr Tulliver was not to be hindered of his
retort.

" You've got a bond for it, I reckon," he said ;
" and you've had your five per cent, Idn or no kin."

" Sister," said Mrs Tulliver, pleadingly, " drink
your wine, and let me give you some almonds and
raisins."

" Bessy, I'm sorry for you," said Mrs Glegg, very
much with the feeling of a cur that seizes the oppor-
tunity of diverting his bark towards the man who
carries no stick. " It's poor work, talking o' almonds
and raisins."

" Lors, sister Glegg, don't be so quarrelsome,"

132 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

said Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry a little. " You
may be struck with a fit, getting so red in the face
after dinner, and we are but just out o' mourning,
all of us — and all wi' gowns craped alike and just
put by — it's very bad among sisters."

"I should think it is bad," said Mrs Glegg.
" Things are come to a fine pass when one sister
invites the other to her house o' purpose to quarrel
with her and abuse her."

" Softly, softly, Jane — be reasonable — ^be reason-
able," said Mr Glegg.

But while he was speaking, Mr Tulliver, who had
by no means said enough to satisfy his anger, burst
out again.

"Who wants to quarrel with you?" he said.
" It's you as can't let people alone, but must be
gnawing at 'em for ever. I should never want to
quarrel with any woman, if she kept her place."

" My place, indeed ! " said Mrs Glegg, getting
rather more shrill. *' There's your betters, Mr Tul-
liver, as are dead and in their grave, treated me
with a different sort o' respect to what you do —
though I've got a husband as 11 sit by and see me
abused by them as 'ud never ha' had the chance if
there hadn't been them in our family as married
worse than they might ha' done."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 133

" If you talk o' that," said Mr Tulliver, " my
family's as good as yours — and better, for it hasn't
got a damned ill-tempered woman in it."

" Well ! " said Mrs Glegg, rising from her chair,
" I don't know whether you think it's a fine thing
to sit by and hear me swore at, Mr Glegg ; but I m
not going to stay a minute longer in this house.
You can stay behind, and come home with the gig
— and I'll walk home."

"Dear heart, dear heart!" said Mr Glegg in a
melancholy tone, as he followed his wife out of the
room.

" Mr Tulliver, how could you talk so ? " said Mrs
Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

"Let her go/* said Mr Tulliver, too hot to be
damped by any amount of tears. " Let her go, and
the sooner the better : she won't be trying to domi-
neer over me again in a huny.''

" Sister Pullet,'' said Mrs Tulliver, helplessly, " do
you think it 'ud be any use for you to go after her
and try to pacify her ? "

" Better not, better not," said Mr Deaue. " You'll
make it up another day."

" Then, sisters, shall we go and look at the chil-
dren?" said Mrs Tulliver, drjring her eyes.

No proposition could have been more seasonable.

134 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Mr Tulliver felt very much as if the air had been
cleared of obtrusive flies now the women were out
of the room. There were few things he liked
better than a chat with Mr Deane, whose close ap-
plication to business allowed the pleasure very
rarely. Mr Deane, he considered, was the " know-
ingest" man of his acquaintance, and he had besides
a ready causticity of tongue that made an agree-
able supplement to Mr TuUiver's own tendency
that way, which had remained in rather an inar-
ticulate condition. And now the women were gone,
they could carry on their serious talk without fri-
volous interruption. They could exchange their
views concerning the Duke of Wellington, whose
conduct in the Catholic Question had thrown such
an entirely new light on his character ; and speak
slightingly of his conduct at the battle of Waterloo,
which he would never have won if there hadn't
been a great many Englishmen at his back, not to
speak of Blucher and the Prussians, who, as Mr Tul-
liver had heard from a person of particular know-
ledge in that matter, had come up in the very nick
of time ; though here there was a slight dissidence,
Mr Deane remarking that he was not disposed to
give much credit to the Prussians, — the build of their
vessels, together with the unsatisfactory character of

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 135

transactions in Dantzic beer, inclining him to form
rather a low view of Prussian pluck generally.
Eather beaten on this ground, Mr Tulliver pro-
ceeded to express his fears that the country could
never again be what it used to be ; but Mr Deane,
attached to a firm of which the returns were on the
increase, naturally took a more lively view of the
present ; and had some details to give concerning
the state of the imports, especially in hides and
spelter, which soothed Mr Tulliver 's imagination by
throwing into more distant perspective the period
when the country would become utterly the prey of
Papists and Eadicals, and there would be no more
chance for honest men.

Uncle Pullet sat by and listened with twinkling
eyes to these high matters. He didn't under-
stand politics himself — thought they were a natural
gift — but by what he could make out, this Duke of
Wellington was no better than he should be.

CHAPTER VIII.

MR TTJLLIVER SHOWS HIS WEAKER SIDE.

"Suppose sister Glegg should call her money in —
it 'ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five
hundred pounds now," said Mrs Tulliver to her
husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review
of the day.

Mrs Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her
husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her
early married life a facility of saying things which
drove him in the opposite direction to the one she
desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping
their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish
apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion
that it can swim in a straight line beyond the en-
circling glass. Mrs Tulliver was an amiable fish of
this kind, and, after running her head ao-ainst the
same resisting medium for thirteen years, would go
at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 137

This observation of hers tended directly to con-
vince Mr TuUiver that it would not be at all awk-
ward for him to raise five hundred pounds; and
when Mrs Tulliver became rather pressing to know
how he would raise it without mortgaging the mill
and the house which he had said he never would
mortgage, since nowadays people were none so
ready to lend money without security, Mr Tulliver,
getting warm, declared that Mrs Glegg might do as
she liked about calling in her money — he should pay
it in, whether or not. He was not going to be be-
holding to his wife's sisters. When a man had
married into a family where there was a whole litter
of women, he might have plenty to put up with if
he choose. But Mr Tulliver did not choose.

Mrs Tulliver cried a little in a trickling quiet way
as she put on her nightcap ; but presently sank
into a comfortable sleep, lulled by the thought that
she would talk everything over with her sister Pullet
to-morrow, when she was to take the children to
Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked forward to
any distinct issue from that talk ; but it seemed im-
possible that past events should be so obstinate as
to remain unmodified when they were complained
against.

Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too

138 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

was thinking of a visit lie would pay on tlie morrow,
and his ideas on the subject were not of so vague
and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner.
Mr Tulliver, when under the influence of a strong
feeling, had a promptitude in action that may seem
inconsistent with that painful sense of the compli-
cated puzzling nature of human affairs under which
his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted ;
but it is really not improbable that there was a
' direct relation between these apparently contradic-
tory phenomena, since I have observed that for get-
ting a strong impression that a skein is tangled,
there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single
thread. It was owing to this promptitude that Mr
TuUiver was on horseback soon after dinner the next
day (he was not dyspeptic) on his way to Basset to
see his sister Moss and her husband. For having made
up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs Glegg
her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred
to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred
pounds lent to his brother-in-law Moss, and if said
brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money
within a given time, it would go far to lessen the
fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr Tulliver's
spirited step might have worn in the eyes of weak
people who require to know precisely how a thing is

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 139

to be done before tliey are strongly confident that
it will be easy.

For Mr Tulliver was in a position neither new
nor striking, but, like other everyday things, sure
to have a cumulative efiect that will be felt in the
long run : he was held to be a much more substan-
tial man than he really was. And as we are all apt
to believe what the world believes about us, it was
his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same
sort of remote pity with which a spare long-necked
man hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbour
is stricken with apoplexy. He had been always
used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages
as a man who worked his own mill, and owned a
pretty bit of land ; and these jokes naturally kept
up his sense that he was a man of considerable sub-
stance. They gave a pleasant flavour to his glass
on a market-day, and if it had not been for the re-
currence of half-yearly payments, Mr Tulliver would
really have forgotten that there was a mortgage
of two thousand pounds on his very desirable free-
hold. That was not altogether his own fault, since
one of the thousand pounds was his sister's fortune,
which he had had to pay on her marriage ; and a man
who has neighbours that will go to law with him, is
not likely to pay off his mortgages, especially if he

140 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances who want
to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty
to be represented by parchment. Our friend Mr
Tulliver had a good-natured fibre in him, and
did not like to give harsh refusals even to a sister,
who had not only come into the world in that
superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a
necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown her-
self away in marriage, and had crowned her mis-
takes by having an eighth baby. On this point Mr
Tulliver was conscious of being a little weak ; but
he apologised to himself by saying that poor Gritty
had been a good-looking wench before she married
Moss — he would sometimes say this even with a
slight tremulousness in his voice. But this morning
he was in a mood more becoming a man of business,
and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes,
with their deep ruts, — lying so far away from a
market-town that the labour of drawing produce
and manure was enough to take away the best part
of the profits on such poor land as that parish was
made of, — he got up a due amount of irritation
against Moss as a man without capital, who, if
murrain and blight were abroad, was sure to have
his share of them, and who, the more you tried to
help him out of the mud, would sink the further in.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 141

It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he
were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds : it
would make him look about him better, and not act
so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the
last : in fact, Mr TuUiver had been too easy with
his brother-in-law, and because he had let the in-
terest run on for two years, Moss was likely enough
to think that he should never be troubled about the
principal. But Mr Tulliver was determined not to
encourage such shuffling people any longer ; and a
ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to ener-
vate a man's resolution by softening his temper.
The deep-trodden hoof-marks, made in the muddiest
days of winter, gave him a shake now and then
which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at
the father of lawyers, who, whether by means of his
hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do
with this state of the roads ; and the abundance of
foul land and neglected fences that met his eye,
though they made no part of his brother LToss's
farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction
with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn't
Moss's fallow, it might have been : Basset was all
alike ; it was a beggarly parish in Mr Tulliver's
opinion, and his opinion was certainly not ground-
less. Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor

142 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar,
and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If
any one strongly impressed with the power of the
human mind to triumph over circumstances, will
contend that the parishioners of Basset might never-
theless have been a very superior class of people,
I have nothing to urge against that abstract pro-
position; I only know that, in point of fact, the
Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circum-
stances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that
seemed to the unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere
but into each other, did really lead, with patience,
to a distant high-road ; but there were many feet in
Basset which they led more frequently to a centre
of dissipation, spoken of formally as the " Markis o*
Granby," but among intimates as " Dickison's." A
large low room with a sanded floor, a cold scent
of tobacco, modified by undetected beer-dregs, Mr
Dickison leaning against the doorpost with a melan-
choly pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to the day-
light as a last night's guttered candle — aU this may
not seem a very seductive form of temptation ; but
the majority of men in Basset found it fatally allur-
ing when encountered on their road towards four
o'clock on a wintry afternoon ; and if any wife in
Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 143

a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more
emphatically than by saying that he didn't spend a
shilling at Dickison's from one Whitsuntide to an-
other. Mrs Moss had said so of her husband more
than once, when her brother was in a mood to find
fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And
nothing could be less pacifying to Mr TuUiver than
the behaviour of the farmyard gate, which he no
sooner attempted to push open with his riding-stick,
than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are
known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine
or human. He was about to get down and lead his
horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farm-
yard, shadowed drearily by the large half-timbered
buildings, up to the long line of tumble -down
dwelling-house standing on a raised causeway, but
the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that
frustration of a plan he had determined on — ^namely,
not to get down from his horse during this visit. If
a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle
and speak from that height, above the level of
pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant
horizon. Mrs Moss heard the sound of the horse's
feet, and, when her brother rode up, was already out-
side the kitchen door, with a half- weary smile on her
face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs Moss's

144 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

face bore a faded resemblance to her brother's ; baby's
little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to
show more strikingly that the cheek was faded.

" Brother, I'm glad to see you," she said, in an
affectionate tone. " I didn't look for you to-day.
How do you do ?'*

" Oh, .... pretty well, Mrs Moss .... pretty
well/' answered the brother, with cool deliberation,
as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that
question. She knew at once that her brother was
not in a good humour : he never called her Mrs
Moss except when he was angry, and when they
were in company. But she thought it was in the
order of nature that people who were poorly off
should be snubbed. Mrs Moss did not take her
stand on the equality of the human race : she was
a patient, prolific, loving-hearted woman.

"Your husband isn't in the house, I suppose?"
added Mr Tulliver, after a gxave pause, during which
four children had run out, like chickens whose
mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the
hencoop.

"No," said Mrs Moss, "but he's only in the
potato-field yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Close
in a minute, and tell father your uncle's come. You'll
get down, brother, won't you, and take somethmg?"

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 145

" No, no ; I can't get down. I must be going
home again directly/' said Mr Tulliver, looking at
the distance.

"And how's Mrs Tulliver and the children?"
said Mrs Moss, humbly, not daring to press her
invitation.

"Oh ... . pretty well Tom's going to a new
school at Midsummer — a deal of expense to me.
It's bad work for me, lying out o' my money."

" I wish you'd be so good as let the children come
and see their cousins some day. My little uns
want to see their cousin Maggie, so as never was.
And me her god-mother, and so fond of her — there's
nobody 'ud make a bigger fuss with her, according
to what they've got. And I know she likes to come,
for she's a loving child, and how quick and clever
she is, to be sure ! "

If Mrs Moss had been one of the most astute
women in the world, instead of being one of the
simplest, she could have thought of nothing more
likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of
Maggie. He seldom found any one volunteering
praise of " the little wench : " it was usually left
entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But
Maggie always appeared in the most amiable light
at her aunt Moss's : it was her Alsatia, where she

VOL. I. K

146 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

was out of the reacli of law — if she upset anything,
dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things
were matters of course at her aunt Moss's. In spite
of himself, Mr Tulliver's eyes got milder, and he
did not look away from his sister, as he said,

" Ay : she's fonder o' you than o' the other aunts,
I think. She takes after our family : not a bit of
her mother's in her."

" Moss says she's just like what I used to be,''
said Mrs Moss, " though I was never so quick and
fond o' the books. But I think my Lizzy's like her
— she's sharp. Come here, Lizzy, my dear, and let
your uncle see you : he hardly knows you ; you
grow so fast."

Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very
shy when her mother drew her forward, for the small
Mosses were much in awe of their uncle from Dorl-
cote Mill. She was inferior enough to Maggie in
fire and strength of expression, to make the resem-
blance between the two entirely flattering to Mr
Tulliver's fatherly love.

" Ay, they're a bit alike," he said, looking kindly
at the little figure in the soiled pinafore. " They
both take after our mother. You've got enough o'
gells, Gritty," he added, in a tone half compassionate,
half reproachful.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 147

" Four of *em, bless 'em" said Mrs Moss, with a
sigh, stroking Lizzy's hair on each side of her fore-
head ; " as many as there's boys. They've got a
brother a-piece."

*' Ah, but they must turn out and fend for them-
selves/' said Mr TuUiver, feeling that his severity
was relaxing, and trying to brace it by throwing
out a wholesome hint. "They mustn't look to
hanging on their brothers."

" No : but I hope their brothers 'ull love the poor
things, and remember they came o' one father and
mother : the lads 'ull never be the poorer for that,"
said Mrs Moss, flashing out with hurried timidity,
like a half-smothered fire.

Mr TuUiver gave his horse a little stroke on the
flank, then checked it, and said, angrily, " Stand still
with you !" much to the astonishment of that in-
nocent animal.

" And the more there is of 'em, the more they
must love one another," Mrs Moss went on, looking
at her children with a didactic purpose. But she
turned towards her brother again to say, '* Not but
what I hope your boy 'ull allays be good to his
sister, though there's but two of 'em, like you and
me, brother."

That arrow went straight to Mr TuUiver's heart.

148 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of
Maggie was very near to him, and he was not long
in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side
with Tom's relation to Maggie. Would the little
wench ever be poorly off, and Tom rather hard
upon her ?

" Ay, ay, Gritty,'' said the miller, with a new
softness in his tone, " but I've allays done what I
could for you," he added, as if vindicating himself
from a reproach.

" I'm not denying that, brother, and I'm noways
ungrateful," said poor Mrs Moss, too fagged by
toil and children to have strength left for any pride.
" But here's the father. What a while you've been,

Moss r

"While, do you call it?" said Mr Moss, feeHng
out of breath and injured. " I've been running all
the way. Won't you light, Mr TuUiver V

" Well, I'll just get down, and have a bit o' talk
with you in the garden," said Mr Tulliver, feeling
that he should be more likely to show a due spirit
of resolve if his sister were not present.

He got down, and passed with Mr Moss into the
garden, towards an old yew-tree arbour, while his
sister stood tapping her baby on the back, and look-
ing wistfully after them.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 149

Tteir entrance into the yew-tree arbour sur-
prised several fowls that were recreating them-
selves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground,
and at once took flight with much pother and cack-
ling. Mr Tulliver sat down on the bench, and tap-
ping the ground curiously here and there with his
stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened
the conversation by observing, with something like
a snarl in his tone —

"Why, you've got wheat again in that Comer
Close, I see ; and never a bit o' dressing on it.
Youll do no good with it this year."

Mr Moss, who, when he married Miss Tulliver,
had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore
a beard nearly a week old, and had the depressed,
unexpectant air of a machine-horse. He answered
in a patient-grnmbling tone, "Why, poor farmers
like me must do as they can : they must leave it to
them as have got money to play vdth, to put half as
much into the ground as they mean to get out of
it."

" I don't know who should have money to play
with, if it isn't them as can borrow money without
paying interest," said Mr Tulliver, who wished to
get into a slight quarrel ; it was the most natural
and easy introduction to calling in money.

150 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" I know I'm beMnd with the interest," said Mr
Moss, " but I was so unlucky wi' the wool last year ;
and what with the Missis being laid up so, things
have gone awk'arder nor usual."

"Ay," snarled Mr Tulliver, "there's folks as
things 'ull allays go awk'ard with : empty sacks 'ull
never stand upright."

"Well, I don't know what fault youVe got to
find wi' me, Mr TulHver," said Mr Moss, deprecat-
ingly ; " I know there isn't a day-labourer works
harder."

"What's the use o' that," said Mr Tulliver,
sharply, " when a man marries, an's got no capital
to work his farm but his wife's bit o' fortin ? I was
against it from the first ; but you'd neither of you
listen to me. And I can't lie out o' my money
any longer, for I've got to pay five hundred o'
Mrs Glegg's, and there 'ull be Tom an expense to
me, as I should find myself short, even saying I'd
got back all as is my own. You must look about
and see how you can pay me the three hundred
pound."

" Well, if that's what you mean," said Mr Moss,
looking blankly before him, " we'd better be sold up,
and ha' done with it ; I must part wi' every head
o' stock I'n got, to pay you and the landlord too."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 151

Poor relations are undeniably irritating — their
existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part,
and they are almost always very faulty people.
Mr Tulliver had succeeded in getting quite as much
irritated with Mr Moss as he had desired, and he
was able to say angrily, rising from his seat —

" Well, you must do as you can. / can't find
money for everybody else as well as myself. I must
look to my own business, and my own family. I
can't lie out o' my money any longer. You must
raise it as quick as you can.'*

Mr Tulliver walked abruptly out of the arbour as
he uttered the last sentence, and, without looking
round at Mr Moss, went on to the kitchen door,
where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his
sister was waiting in a state of wondering alarm,
which was not without its alleviations, for baby was
making pleasant gurgling sounds, and performing
a great deal of finger practice on the faded face.
Mrs Moss had eight children, but could never over-
come her regret that the twins had not lived. Mr
Moss thought their removal was not without its
consolations. " Won't you come in, brother ? " she
said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was
walking slowly up, while Mr Tulliver bad his foot
already in the stirrup.

152 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" No, no ; good-by/' said he, turning his horse's
head, and riding away.

No man could feel more resolute till he got out-
side the yard-gate, and a little way along the deep-
rutted lane ; but before he reached the next turning,
which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated
farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some
sudden thought. He checked his horse, and made
it stand still in the same spot for two or three
minutes, during which he turned his head from side
to side in a melancholy way, as if he were look-
ing at some painful object on more sides than one.
Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr Tulliver
was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling
world. He turned his horse, and rode slowly back,
giving vent to the climax of feeling which had de-
termined this movement by saying aloud, as he
struck his horse, " Poor little wench ! she'll have
nobody but Tom, belike, when I'm gone."

Mr Tulliver's return into the yard was descried
by several young Mosses, who immediately ran in
with the exciting news to their mother, so that
Mrs Moss was again on the door-step when her
brother rode up. She had been crying, but was
rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 153

no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked
at her, but merely said —

" The father's gone to the field again, if you want
him, brother."

" No, Gritty, no," said Mr Tulliver, in a gentle
tone. " Don't you fret — that's all — I'll make a shift
without the money a bit — only you must be as
cliver and contriving as you can."

Mrs Moss's tears came again at this unexpected
kindness, and she could say nothing.

" Come, come ! — the little wench shall come and
see you. I'll bring her and Tom some day before
he goes to school. You mustn't fret. . . . I'll allays
be a good brother to you."

" Thank you for that word, brother,** said Mrs
Moss, drying her tears ; then turning to Lizzy,
she said, "Eun now, and fetch the coloured egg
for cousin Maggie." Lizzy ran in, and quickly
reappeared with a small paper parcel.

"It's boiled hard, brother, and coloured with
thrums — very pretty : it was done o' purpose for
Maggie. Will you please to carry it in your
pocket?"

" Ay, ay," said Mr Tulliver, putting it carefully
in his side-pocket. " Good-by."

154 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

And so the respectable miller returned along the
Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to
ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger
escaped. It had come across his mind that if he
were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend
to make Tom hard upon Maggie at some distant
day, when her father was no longer there to take
her part ; for simple people, like our friend Mr Tul-
liver, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in
erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of
explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for
" the little wench" had given him a new sensibility
towards his sister.

CHAPTER IX.

TO GAEUM FIES.

While the possible troubles of Maggie's future were
occupying her father's mind, she herself was tast-
ing only the bitterness of the present. Childhood
has no forebodings ; but then, it is soothed by no
memories of outlived sorrow.

The fact was, the day had begun ill with Maggie.
The pleasure of having Lucy to look at, and the
prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs, where
she would hear uncle Pullet's musical-box, had been
marred as early as eleven o'clock by the advent of
the hair-dresser from St Ogg's, who had spoken in
the severest terms of the condition in which he had
found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after
another and saying, " See here ! tut— tut — tut !" in
a tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to
Maggie's imagination was equivalent to the strongest
expression of public opinion. Mr Rappit, the hair-

156 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

dresser, with his well-anointed coronal locks tend-
ing wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of
flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at
that moment the most formidable of her contem-
poraries, into whose street at St Ogg's she would
carefully refrain from entering through the rest of
her life.

Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always
a serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was
enjoined to have Mrs TuUiver's room ready an hour
earlier than usual, that the laying-out of the best
clothes might not be deferred till the last moment,
as was sometimes the case in families of lax
views, where the ribbon-strings were never rolled
up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver
paper, and where the sense that the Sunday clothes
could be got at quite easily produced no shock to
the mind. Already, at twelve o'clock, Mrs Tulli-
ver had on her visiting costume, with a protective
apparatus of brown hoUand, as if she had been a
piece of satin furniture in danger of flies ; Maggie
was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she
might if possible shrink away from the prickliest
of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating,
" Don't, Maggie, my dear — don't look so ugly ! "
and Tom's cheeks were looking particularly brilliant

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 157

as a relief to his best blue suit, whicli he wore with
becoming calmness ; having, after a little wrangling,
effected what was always the one point of interest
to him in his toilette — he had transferred all the
contents of his everyday pockets to those actually
in wear.

As for Lucy, she was just as pretty and neat as
she had been yesterday : no accidents ever happened
to her clothes, and she was never uncomfortable
in them, so that she looked with wondering pity
at Maggie pouting and writhing under the exas-
perating tucker. Maggie would certainly have
torn it off, if she had not been checked by the
remembrance of her recent humiliation about her
hair : as it was, she confined herself to fretting and
twisting, and behaving peevishly about the card-
houses which they were allowed to build till dinner,
as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their
best clothes. Tom could build perfect pyramids of
houses ; but Maggie's would never bear the laying-
on of the roof : — it was always so with the things
that Maggie made ; and Tom had deduced the con-
clusion that no girls could ever make anything.
But it happened that Lucy proved wonderfully
clever at building : she handled the cards so lightly,
and moved so gently, that Tom condescended to

158 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

admire her houses as well as his own, the more
readily because she had asked him to teach her.
Maggie, too, would have admired Lucy's houses,
and would have given up her own unsuccessful
building to contemplate them, without ill- temper,
if her tucker had not made her peevish, and if Tom
had not inconsiderately laughed when her houses
fell, and told her she was " a stupid/'

" Don't laugh at me, Tom ! " she burst out,
angrily, "I'm not a stupid. I know a great
many things you don't/'

" 0, I daresay. Miss Spitfire ! I'd never be such
a cross thing as you — making faces like that. Lucy
doesn't do so. I like Lucy better than you : / wish
Lucy was my sister/'

" Then it's very wicked and cruel of you to wish
so," said Maggie, starting up hurriedly from her
place on the floor, and upsetting Tom's wonderful
pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the cir-
cumstantial evidence was against her, and Tom
turned white with anger, but said nothing: he
would have struck her, only he knew it was coward-
ly to strike a girl, and Tom Tulliver was quite de-
termined he would never do anything cowardly.

Maggie stood in dismay and terror while Tom
got up from the floor and walked away, pale, from

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 159

the scattered ruins of Ms pagoda, and Lucy looked
on mutely, Kke a kitten pausing from its lapping.

"0 Tom," said Maggie, at last, going half-way
towards him, " I didn't mean to knock it down —
indeed, indeed I didn't."

Tom took no notice of her, but took, instead, two
or three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them
with his thumb-nail against the window — vaguely
at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hit-
ting a superannuated blue-bottle which was expos-
ing its imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly
agaiQst the views of nature, who had provided Tom
and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak
individual.

Thus the morning had been made heavy to Mag-
gie, and Tom's persistent coldness to her all through
their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for
her. He called Lucy to look at the half-built
bird's nest without caring to show it Maggie, and
peeled a willow switch for Lucy and himself, with-
out offering one to Maggie. Lucy had said, " Mag-
gie, shouldn't you like one ? " but Tom was deaf.

Still the sight of the peacock opportunely spread-
ing his tail on the stackyard wall, just as they
reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert the mind
temporarily from personal grievances. And this

160 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

was only the begiDning of beautiful sights at Garum
Firs. All the farmyard life was wonderful there
— bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland
hens, with- their feathers all turned the wrong way ;
Guinea-fowls that flew and screamed and dropped
their pretty-spotted feathers ; pouter pigeons and a
tame magpie ; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled
dog, half mastifi" half bull-dog, as large as a lion.
Then there were white railings and white gates all
about, and glittering weathercocks of various de-
sign, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beau-
tiful patterns — nothing was quite common at Garum
Firs : and Tom thought that the unusual size of the
toads there was simply due to the general unusual-
ness which characterised uncle Pullet's possessions as
a gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were na-
turally leaner. As for the house, it was not less
remarkable : it had a receding centre, and two
wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered
with glittering white stucco.

Uncle Pullet had seen the expected party approach-
ing from the window, and made haste to unbar and
unchain the front door, kept always in this fortified
condition from fear of tramps, who might be suppos-
ed to know of the glass-case of stuffed birds in the
hall, and to contemplate rushing in and carrying it

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 161

away on their heads. Aunt Pullet, too, appeared at
the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within
hearing, said, " Stop the children, for God's sake,
Bessy — don't let 'em come up the door-steps : Sally's
bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub their
shoes."

Mrs Pullet's front-door mats were by no means
intended to wipe shoes on : the very scraper had a
deputy to do its dirty work. Tom rebelled parti-
cularly against this shoe-wiping, which he always
considered in the light of an indignity to his sex.
He felt it as the beginning of the disagreeables inci-
dent to a visit at aunt Pullet's, where he had once
been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round
his boots ; a fact which may serve to correct the too
hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must
have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond
of animals — fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.

The next disagreeable was confined to his femi-
nine companions : it was the mounting of the pol-
ished oak stairs, wliich had very handsome carpets
rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that
the ascent of these glossy steps might have served,
in barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal from which
none but the most spotless virtue could have come
off with unbroken limbs. Sophy's weakness about

VOL. L L

162 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter
remonstrance on Mrs Glegg's part ; but Mrs TuUiver
ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it
was a mercy when she and the children were safe
on the landing.

" Mrs Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,"
said Mrs Pullet, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs Tulliver
adjusted her cap.

" Has she, sister ? " said Mrs Tulliver, with an air
of much interest. *' And how do you like it ? "

" It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em
out and putting 'em in again," said Mrs Pullet,
drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and look-
ing at them earnestly, "but it 'ud be a pity for you
to go away without seeing it. There's no knowing
what may happen.''

Mrs Pullet shook her head slowly at this last
serious consideration, which detennined her to single
out a particular key.

" I'm afraid it'll be troublesome to you getting it
out, sister/' said Mrs Tulliver, " but I should like to
see what sort of a crown she's made you "

Mrs Pullet rose with a melancholy air and un-
locked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where
you may have hastily supposed she would find the
new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 163

only have arisen from a too superficial acquaint-
ance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this
wardrobe Mrs Pullet was seeking something small
enough to be hidden among layers of linen — it was
a door-key.

"You must come with me into the best room,"
said Mrs Pullet.

"May the children come too, sister?" inquired
Mrs Tulliver, who saw that Maggie and Lucy were
looking rather eager.

"Well/' said aunt Pullet, reflectively, "it'll per-
haps be safer for 'em to come — they'll be touching
something if we leave 'em behind."

So they went in procession along the bright and
slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar
top of the window which rose above the closed
shutter: it was really quite solemn. Aunt Pullet
paused and unlocked a door which opened on some-
thing still more solemn than the passage : a dark-
ened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly,
showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in
white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded
stood with its legs upwards. Lucy laid hold of
Maggie's frock, and Maggie's heart beat rapidly.

Aunt Pullet half-opened the shutter and then un-
locked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness

164 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

whicli was quite in keeping with the funereal solem-
nity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves
that issued from the wardrobe, made the process
of taking out sheet after sheet of silver-paper quite
pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet
at last was an anticlimax to Maggie, who would
have preferred something more strikingly preter-
natural. But few things could have been more im-
pressive to Mrs Tulliver. She looked all round it in
silence for some moments, and then said emphatic-
ally, " Well, sister, I'll never speak against the full
crowns again ! "

It was a great concession, and Mrs Pullet felt it :
she felt something was due to it,

" You'd like to see it on, sister ? " she said, sadly.
" I'll open the shutter a bit further."

" Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap,
sister," said Mrs Tulliver.

Mrs Pullet took off her cap, displaying the brown
silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which
was common to the more mature and judicious
women of those times, and, placing the bonnet on
her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-
figure, that Mrs Tulliver might miss no point of

o

view

I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 165

o' ribbon on this left side, sister ; what do you
think ?" said Mrs Pullet.

Mrs Tulliver looked earnestly at the point indi-
cated, and turned her head on one side. " Well, I
think it's best as it is ; if you meddled with it, sister,
you might repent/'

"That's true,'' said aunt Pullet, taking off the
bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.

" How much might she charge you for that bon-
net, sister?" said Mrs Tulliver, whose mind was
actively engaged on the possibility of getting a
humble imitation of this chef-d'oeuvre made from a
piece of silk she had at home.

Mrs Pullet screwed up her mouth and shook her
head, and then whispered, " Pullet pays for it ; he
said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church,
let the next best be whose it would."

She began slowly to adjust the trimmings in pre-
paration for returning it to its place in the ward-
robe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a
melancholy turn, for she shook her head.

"Ah," she said at last, "I may never wear it
twice, sister ; who knows ? '*

" Don't talk o' that, sister," answered Mrs Tulli-
ver. " I hope you'll have your health this summer."

" Ah ! but there may come a death in the family.

166 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet.
Cousin Abbott may go, and we can't think o' wear-
ing crape less nor half a year for him."

*'That would be unlucky," said Mrs Tulliver,
entering thoroughly into the possibility of an in-
opportune decease. " There's never so much plea-
sure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially
when the crowns are so chancy — never two summers
aUke."

" Ah, it's the way i' this world," said Mrs Pallet,
returning the bonnet to the wardrobe and locking
it up. She maintained a silence characterised by
head-shaking, until they had all issued from the
solemn chamber and were in her own room again.
Then, beginning to cry, she said, "Sister, if you
should never see that bonnet again till I'm dead and
gone, you'll remember I showed it you this day."

Mrs Tulliver felt that she ought to be affected,
but she was a woman of sparse tears, stout and
healthy — she couldn't cry so much as her sister
Pullet did, and had often felt her deficiency at
funerals. Her effort to bring tears into her eyes
issued in an odd contraction of her face. Maoforie,
looking on attentively, felt that there was some
painful mystery about her aunt's bonnet which she
was considered too young to understand; indig-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 167

nantly conscious, all the while, that she could have
understood that, as well as everything else, if she
had been taken into confidence.

When they went down, uncle Pullet observed,
with some acumen, that he reckoned the missis
had been showing her bonnet — that was what had
made them so long up-stairs. With Tom the inter-
val had seemed still longer, for he had been seated
in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa directly
opposite his uncle Pullet, who regarded him with
twinkling grey eyes, and occasionally addressed him
as " Young sir."

" Well, young sir, what do you learn at school ? "
was a standing question with uncle Pullet ; where-
upon Tom always looked sheepish, rubbed his hand
across his face, and answered, " I don't know." It
was altogether so embarrassing to be seated tete-cb-tete
with uncle Pullet, that Tom could not even look at
the prints on the walls, or the fly-cages, or the
wonderful flower-pots ; he saw nothing but his
uncle's gaiters. Not that Tom was in awe of his
uncle's mental superiority ; indeed, he had made up
his mind that he didn't want to be a gentleman
farmer, because he shouldn't like to be such a thin-
legged silly fellow as his uncle Pullet — a molly-
coddle, in fact. A boy's sheepishness is by no

168 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

means a sign of overmastering reverence ; and
while you are making encouraging advances to him
under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense
of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking
you extremely queer. The only consolation I can
suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably
thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you
have mastered a restive horse, or thrashed a dray-
man, or have got a gun in your hand, that these
shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and
enviable character. At least, I am quite sure of
Tom Tulliver's sentiments on these points. In very
tender years, when he still wore a lace border under
his out-door cap, he was often observed peeping
through the bars of a gate and making minatory
gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded
the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to
strike terror into their astonished minds ; indicating,
thus early, that desire for mastery over the inferior
animals, wild and domestic, including cockchafers,
neighbours' dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages
has been an attribute of so much promise for the
fortunes of our race. Now Mr Pullet never rode
anything taller than a low pony, and was the least
predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous,
as apt to go off of themselves by nobody's particu-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 169

lar desire. So that Tom was not without strong
reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he
had described uncle Pullet as a nincompoop, taking
care at the same time to observe that he was a very
"rich fellow."

The only alleviating circumstance in a tite-dj-tite
with uncle Pullet was that he kept a variety of
lozenges and peppermint drops about his person,
and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the
void by proposing a mutual solace of this kind.

" Do you like peppermints, young sir ? " required
only a tacit answer when it was accompanied by a
presentation of the article in question.

The appearance of the little girls suggested to
uncle Pullet the further solace of small sweet-cakes,
of which he also kept a stock under lock and key
for his own private eating on wet days ; but the
three children had no sooner got the tempting deli-
cacy between their fingers, than aunt Pullet desired
them to abstain from eating it till the tray and the
plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would
make the floor "all over" crumbs. Lucy didn't
mind that much, for the cake was so pretty, she
thought it was rather a pity to eat it ; but Tom,
watching his opportunity while the elders were
talking, hastily stowed it in his mouth at two bites.

170 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and chewed it furtively. As for Maggie, becoming
fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and Nau-
sicaa, which uncle Pullet had bought as a " pretty
Scripture thing," she presently let fall her cake,
and in an unlucky movement crushed it beneath
her foot — a source of so much agitation to aunt
Pullet and conscious disgrace to Maggie, that she
began to despair of hearing the musical snuff-box
to-day, till, after some reflection, it occurred to her
that Lucy was in high favour enough to venture on
asking for a tune. So she whispered to Lucy, and
Lucy, who always did what she was desired to do,
went up quietly to her uncle's knee, and, blushing
all over her neck while she fingered her necklace,
said, " Will you please play us a tune, uncle ? "

Lucy thought it was by reason of some excep-
tional talent in uncle Pullet that the snuff-box
played such beautiful tunes, and indeed the thing
was viewed in that light by the majority of his
neighbours in Garum. Mr Pullet had bought the
box, to begin with, and he understood winding it
up, and knew which tune it was going to play be-
forehand ; altogether, the possession of this unique
"piece of music" was a proof that Mr Pullet's
character was not of that entire nullity which might
otherwise have been attributed to it. But uncle

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 171

Pullet, when entreated to exhibit his accomplish-
ment, never depreciated it by a too ready consent.
"We'll see about it," was the answer he always
gave, carefully abstaining from any sign of compli-
ance till a suitable number of minutes had passed.
Uncle Pullet had a programme for all great social
occasions, and in this way fenced himself in from
much painful confusion and perplexing freedom of
will.

Perhaps the suspense did heighten Maggie's en-
joyment when the fairy tune began: for the first
time she quite forgot that she had a load on her
mind — that Tom was angry with her ; and by the
time "Hush, ye pretty warbling choir," had 'been
played, her face wore that bright look of happiness,
while she sat immovable with her hands clasped,
which sometimes comforted her mother with the
sense that Maggie could look pretty now and then, in
spite of her brown skin. But when the magic music
ceased, she jumped up, and, running towards Tom,
put her arm round his neck and said, " 0, Tom,
isn't it pretty?''

Lest you should think it showed a revolting insen-
sibility in Tom that he felt any new anger towards
Maggie for this uncalled-for, and, to him, inexpli-
cable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of

172 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

cowslip wine in his hand, and that she jerked him
so as to make him spill half of it. He must have
been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, " Look
there, now!" especially when his resentment was
sanctioned, as it was, by general disapprobation of
Maggie's behaviour.

" Why don't you sit still, Maggie ? " her mother
said peevishly.

" Little gells mustn't come to see me if they
behave in that way," said aunt Pullet.

" Why, you're too rough, little miss," said uncle
Pullet.

Poor Maggie sat down again, with the music all
chased out of her soul, and the seven small demons
all in again.

Mrs TuUiver, foreseeing nothing but misbehaviour
while the children remained in- doors, took an early
opportunity of suggesting that, now they were rested
after their walk, they might go and play out of
doors ; and aunt Pullet gave permission, only en-
joining them not to go off the paved walks in the
garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed,
to view them from a distance on the horse-block ; a
restriction which had been imposed ever since Tom
had been found guilty of running after the peacock.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 173

with an illusory idea that fright would make one of
its feathers drop off.

Mrs TuUiver's thoughts had been temporarily
diverted from the quarrel with Mrs Glegg by millin-
ery and maternal cares, but now the great theme
of the bonnet was thrown into perspective, and the
children were out of the way, yesterday's anxieties
recurred.

" It weighs on my mind so as never was,'' she
said, by way of opening the subject, " sister Glegg's
leaving the house in that way. I*m sure I'd no wish
t' offend a sister."

" Ah," said aunt Pullet, " there's no accounting
for what Jane 'ull do. I wouldn't speak of it out
o' the family — if it w^asn't to Dr Turubull ; but it's
my belief Jane lives too low. I've said so to Pullet
often and often, and he knows it."

" Why, you said so last Monday was a week,
when we came away from drinking tea with 'em,"
said Mr Pullet, beginning to nurse his knee and
shelter it with his pocket-handkerchief, as was his
way when the conversation took an interesting turn.

"Very like I did," said Mrs Pullet, "for you
remember when I said things, better than I can
remember myself He's got a wonderful memory,

174 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Pullet has/' she continued, looking pathetically at
her sister. "I should be poorly off if he was to
have a stroke, for he always remembers when I've
got to take my doctor's stuff — and I'm taking three
sorts now/'

" There's the * pills as before' every other night,
and the new drops at eleven and four, and the 'fer-
vescing mixture 'when agreeable,'" rehearsed Mr
Pullet, with a punctuation determined by a lozenge
on his tongue.

" Ah, perhaps it 'ud be better for sister Glegg, if
she 'd go to the doctor sometimes, instead o' chew-
ing Turkey rhubarb whenever there's anything the
matter with her," said Mrs Tulliver, who naturally
saw the wide subject of medicine chiefly in relation
to Mrs Glegg.

*'It's dreadful to think on,'' said aunt Pullet,
raising her hands and letting them fall again,
" people playing with their own insides in that
way ! And it's flying i' the face o' Providence ; for
what are the doctors for, if we aren't to call 'em in ?
And when folks have got the money to pay for a
doctor, it isn't respectable, as I've told Jane many
a time. I'm ashamed of acquaintance knowing it."

"Well, we've no call to be ashamed," said Mr
Pullet, "for Doctor Turnbull hasn't got such an-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 175

other patient as you i' this parish, now old Mrs
Sutton's gone."

" Pullet keeps all my physic-bottles — did you
know, Bessy ? '' said Mrs Pullet. " He won't have
one sold. He says it's nothing but right, folks
should see 'em when I'm gone. They fill two o' the
long store-room shelves a'ready — but,'' she added,
beginning to cry, " it's well if they ever fill three.
I may go before I've made up the dozen o' these
last sizes. The pill-boxes are in the closet in my
room — you'll remember that, sister — ^but there's no-
thing to show for the boluses, if it isn't the bills."

" Don't talk o' your going, sister," said Mrs Tul-
liver ; " I should have nobody to stand between me
and sister Glegg if you was gone. And there's no-
body but you can get her to make it up wi' Mr
Tulliver, for sister Deane's never o' my side, and if
she was, it's not to be looked for as she can speak
like them as have got an independent fortin."

"Well, your husband is awk'ard, you know,
Bessy," said Mrs Pullet, good-naturedly ready to use
her deep depression on her sister's account as well
as her own. " He's never behaved quite so pretty
to our family as he should do, and the children take
after him — the boy's very mischievous, and runs
away from his aunts and uncles, and the gell's rude

176 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and brown. It's your bad luck, and I'm sorry for
you, Bessy ; for you was allays my favourite sister,
and we allays liked the same patterns."

" I know TuUiver's hasty, and says odd things,"
said Mrs Tulliver, wiping away one small tear from
the corner of her eye, "but I'm sure he's never been
the man, since he married me, to object to my
making the friends o' my side o' the family welcome
to the house."

"/ don't want to make the worst of you, Bessy,"
said Mrs Pullet, compassionately, " for I doubt you'll
have trouble enough without that ; and your hus-
band's got that poor sister and her children hanging
on him, and so given to lawing, they say. I doubt
he'll leave you poorly off when he dies. Not as I'd
have it said out o' the family."

This view of her position was naturally far from
cheering to Mrs Tulliver. Her imagination was
not easily acted on, but she could not help thinldng
that her case was a hard one, since it appeared that
other people thought it hard.

" Tm sure, sister, I can't help myself," she said,
urged by the fear lest her anticipated misfortunes
might be held retributive, to take a comprehensive
review of her past conduct. *' There's no woman
strives more for her children ; and I'm sure, at

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 177

scouring-time tliis Ladyday as I've had all the bed-
hangings taken down, I did as much as the two
gells put together ; and there's this last elder-flower
wine I've made — beautiful ! I allays offer it along
with the sherry, though sister Glegg will have it
I'm so extravagant; and as for liking to have my
clothes tidy, and not go a fright about the house,
there's nobody in the parish can say anything against
me in respect o' backbiting and making mischief,
for I don't wish anybody any harm ; and nobody loses
by sending me a pork-pie, for my pies are fit to show
with the best o' my neighbours' ; and the linen's so
in order, as if I was to die to-morrow I shouldn't be
ashamed. A woman can do no more nor she can."

" But it's all o' no use, you know, Bessy," said
Mrs Pullet, holding her head on one side, and fix-
ing her eyes pathetically on her sister, "if your
husband makes away with his money. Not but
what if you was sold up, and other folks bought
your furniture, it's a comfort to think as you've
kept it well rubbed. And there's the linen, with
your maiden mark on, might go all over the country.
It 'ud be a sad pity for our family." iMrs Pullet
shook her head slowly.

"But what can I do, sister?" said Mrs Tulliver.
" Mr Tulliver's not a man to be dictated to — not if

VOL. I. M

178 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

I was to go to the parson, and get by heart what I
should tell my husband for the best. And I'm sure
I don't pretend to know anything about putting out
money and all that. I could never see into men's
business as sister Glegg does."

" Well, you're like me in that, Bessy," said Mrs
Pullet ; " and I think it 'ud be a deal more becom-
ing o' Jane if she'd have that pier-glass rubbed
oftener — there was ever so many spots on it last
week — instead o' dictating to folks as have more
comings in than she ever had, and telling 'em what
they've to do with their money. But Jane and me
were allays contrairy : she would have striped things,
and I like spots. You like a spot too, Bessy : we
allays hung together i' that."

Mrs Pullet, affected by this last reminiscence,
looked at her sister pathetically.

" Yes, Sophy," said Mrs Tulliver, " I remember
our having a blue ground with a white spot both
alike — I've got a bit in a bed-quilt now ; and if you
would but go and see sister Glegg, and persuade
her to make it up with Tulliver, I should take it
very kind of you. You was allays a good sister
to me."

" But the right thing 'ud be for Tulliver to go
and make it up with her himself, and say he was

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 179

sorry for speaking so rash. If he's borrowed money
of her, he shouldn't be above that," said Mrs Pullet,
whose partiality did not blind her to principles :
she did not forget what was due to people of inde-
pendent fortune.

" It's no use talking o' that," said poor Mrs Tul-
liver, almost peevishly. " If I was to go down on
my bare knees on the gravel to Tulliver, he'd never
humble himself"

"Well, you can't expect me to persuade Jane
to beg pardon," said Mrs Pullet. "Her temper's
beyond everything ; it's well if it doesn't carry her
off her mind, though there never was any of our
family went to a madhouse.'*

" I'm not thinking of her begging pardon," said
Mrs Tulliver. "But if she'd just take no notice,
and not call her money in ; as it's not so much for
one sister to ask of another ; time 'ud mend things,
and Tulliver 'ud forget all about it, and they'd be
friends again."

Mrs Tulliver, you perceive, was not aware of her
husband's irrevocable determination to pay in the
five hundred pounds ; at least such a determination
exceeded her powers of belief.

" Well, Bessy," said Mrs Pullet, mournfully, " I
don't want to help you on to ruin. I won't be

180 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

behindhand i' doing you a good turn, if it is to be
done. And I don't like it said among acquaintance
as we've got quarrels in the family. I shall tell
Jane that ; and I don't mind driving to Jane's to-
morrow, if Pullet doesn't mind. What do you say,
MrPuUet?''

"I've no objections," said Mr Pullet, who was
perfectly contented with any course the quarrel
might take, so that Mr Tulliver did not apply to
Mm for money. Mr Pullet was nervous about his
investments, and did not see how a man could have
any security for his money unless he turned it into
land.

After a little further discussion as to whether it
would not be better for Mrs Tulliver to accompany
them on the visit to sister Glegg, Mrs Pullet, ob-
serving that it was tea-time, turned to reach from a
drawer a delicate damask napkin, which she pinned
before her in the fashion of an apron. The door did,
in fact, soon open, but instead of the tea-tray, Sally
introduced an object so startling that both Mrs
Pullet and Mrs Tulliver gave a scream, causing
uncle Pullet to swallow his lozenge — for the fifth
time in his life, as he afterwards noted.

CHAPTER X.

MAGGIE BEHAVES WOESE THAN SHE EXPECTED.

The startling object which thus made an epoch for
uncle Pullet was no other than little Lucy, with
one side of her person, from her small foot to her
bonnet- crown, wet and discoloured with mud, hold-
ing out two tiny blackened hands, and making a
very piteous face. To account for this unpre-
cedented apparition in aunt Pullet's parlour, we
must return to the moment when the three children
went to play out of doors, and the small demons
who had taken possession of Maggie's soul at an
early period of the day had returned in all the
greater force after a temporary absence. All the
disagreeable recollections of the morning were thick
upon her, when Tom, whose displeasure towards
her had been considerably refreshed by her foolish
trick of causing him to upset his cowslip wine, said,
" Here, Lucy, you come along with me," and walked

182 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

off to the area where the toads were, as if there
were no Maggie in existence. Seeing this, Maggie
lingered at a distance, looking like a small Medusa
with her snakes cropped. Lucy was naturally
pleased that cousin Tom was so good to her, and it
was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad
with a piece of string when the toad was safe down
the area, with an iron grating over him. Still Lucy
wished Maggie to enjoy the spectacle also, especially
as she would doubtless find a name for the toad, and
say what had been his past history ; for Lucy had a
delighted semi-belief in Maggie's stories about the
live things they came upon by accident — how Mrs
Earwig had a wash at home, and one of her children
had fallen into the hot copper, for which reason she
was running so fast to fetch the doctor. Tom had
a profound contempt for this nonsense of Maggie's,
smashing the earwig at once as a superfluous yet
easy means of proving the entire unreality of such
a story ; but Lucy, for the life of her, could not help
fancying there was something in it, and at all events
thought it was very pretty make-beHeve. So now
the' desire to know the history of a very portly toad,
added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run
back to Maggie and say, " 0, there is such a big,
funny toad, Maggie ! Do come and see."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 183

Maggie said nothing, but turned away from her
with a deeper frown. As long as Tom seemed to
prefer Lucy to her, Lucy made part of his unkind-
ness. Maggie would have thought a little while
ago that she could never be cross with pretty little
Lucy, any more than she could be cruel to a little
white mouse ; but then, Tom had always been quite
indifferent to Lucy before, and it had been left to
Maggie to pet and make much of her. As it was,
she was actually beginning to think that she should
like to make Lucy cry, by slapping or pinching her,
especially as it might vex Tom, whom it was of no
use to slap, even if she dared, because he didn't mind
it. And if Lucy hadn't been there, Maggie was
sure he would have got friends with her sooner.

Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive,
is an amusement that it is possible to exhaust,
and Tom by-and-by began to look round for some
other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a
garden, where they were not to go off the paved
walks, there was not a great choice of sport. The
only great pleasure such a restriction allowed was
the pleasure of breaking it, and Tom began to
meditate an insurrectionary visit to the pond, about
Of field's length beyond the garden.

" I say, Lucy/' he began, nodding his head up

184 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

and down with great significance, as he coiled up his
string again, " what do you think I mean to do ? "

" What, Tom ? " said Lucy, with curiosity.

" I mean to go to the pond, and look at the pike.
You may go with me if you like,"' said the young
sultan.

" 0, Tom, dare you ? " said Lucy. " Aunt said
we mustn't go out of the garden.''

" 0, I shall go out at the other end of the gar-
den," said Tom. " Nobody 'ull see us. Besides, I
don't care if they do — I'll run off home."

" But / couldn't run," said Lucy, who had never
before been exposed to such severe temptation.

" 0, never mind — they won't be cross with you"
said Tom. " You say I took you."

Tom walked along, and Lucy trotted by his side,
timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something
naughty — excited also by the mention of that cele-
brity, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain
whether it was a fish or a fowl. Maggie saw them
leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulse
to follow. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to
lose sight of their objects than love, and that Tom
and Lucy should do or see anything of which she
was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea
to Maggie. So she kept a few yards behind them.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 185

unobserved by Tom, who was presently absorbed
in watching for the pike — a highly interesting
monster; he was said to be so very old, so veiy
large, and to have such a remarkable appetite. The
pike, like other celebrities, did not show when he
was watched for, but Tom caught sight of some-
thing in rapid movement in the water, which at-
tracted him to another spot on the brink of the
pond.

" Here, Lucy ! " he said in a loud whisper, " come
here ! take care ! keep on the grass — don't step
where the cows have been !" he added, pointing to
a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each
side of it ] for Tom's contemptuous conception of
a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk
in dirty places.

Lucy came carefully as she was bidden, and bent
down to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head
darting through the water. It was a water-snake,
Tom told her, and Lucy at last could see the ser-
pentine wave of its body, very much wondering
that a snake could swim. Maggie had drawn nearer
and nearer — she must see it too, though it was
bitter to her like everything else, since Tom did not
care about her seeing it. At last, she was close by
Lucy, and Tom, who had been aware of her approach.

186 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

but would not notice it till he was obKged, turned
round and said —

" Now, get away, Maggie. There's no room for
you on the grass here. Nobody asked you to come."

There were passions at war in Maggie at that
moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were
made by passion only, but the essential n fisysdog
which was present in the passion was wanting to
the action ; the utmost Maggie could do, with a fierce
thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor
little pink- and- white Lucy into the cow- trodden
mud.

Then Tom could not restrain himself, and gave
Maggie two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to
pick up Lucy, who lay crying helplessly. Maggie
retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards ofi", and
looked on impenitently. Usually her repentance
came quickly after one rash deed, but now Tom and
Lucy had made her so miserable, she was glad to
spoil their happiness — glad to make everybody
uncomfortable. Why should she be sorry? Tom
was very slow to forgive her, however sorry she
might have been.

" I shall tell mother, you know. Miss Mag," said
Tom, loudly and emphatically, as soon as Lucy was
up and ready to walk away. It was not Tom's

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 187

practice to " tell/' but here justice clearly demanded
that Maggie should be visited with the utmost
punishment : not that Tom had learnt to put his
views in that abstract form ; he never mentioned
" justice/' and had no idea that his desire to punish
might be called by that fine name. Lucy was too
entirely absorbed by the evil that had befallen her
— the spoiling of her pretty best clothes, and the
discomfort of being wet and dirty — to think much
of the cause, which was entirely mysterious to her.
She could never have guessed what she had done to
make Maggie angry with her; but she felt that
Maggie was very unkind and disagreeable, and
made no magnanimous entreaties to Tom that he
would not " tell,'' only running along by his side
and crying piteously, while Maggie sat on the roots
of the tree and looked after them with her small
Medusa face.

" Sally," said Tom, when they reached the kitchen
door, and Sally looked at them in speechless amaze,
with a piece of bread-and-butter in her mouth and a
toasting-fork in her hand — " Sally, teU mother it
was Maggie pushed Lucy into the mud.'*

" But Lors ha' massy, how did you get near such
mud as that ? " said Sally, making a wry face, as
she stooped down and examined the corpus delicti.

188 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Tom's imagination had not been rapid and capa-
cious enough to include this question among the
foreseen consequences, but it was no sooner put than
he foresaw whither it tended, and that Maggie
would not be considered the only culprit in the
case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen
door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing
which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-
made knowledge.

Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting
Lucy at the parlour door, for to have so dirty an
object introduced into the house at Garum Firs was
too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.

"Goodness gracious!" aunt Pullet exclaimed,
after preluding by an inarticulate scream ; " keep
her at the door, Sally ! Don't bring her off the oil-
cloth, whatever you do."

" Why, she's tumbled into some nasty mud," said
Mrs Tulliver, going up to Lucy to examine into the
amount of damage to clothes for which she felt her-
self responsible to her sister Deane.

" If you please, 'um, it was Miss Maggie as pushed
her in," said Sally ; " Master Tom's been and said
so, and they must ha' been to the pond, for it's only
there they could ha' got into such dirt."

"There it is, Bessy; it's what I've been telling

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 189

you/' said Mrs Pullet, in a tone of prophetic sadness ;
" it's your children — there's no knowing what they'll
come to/'

Mrs Tulliver was mute, feeling herself a truly
wretched mother. As usual, the thought pressed
upon her that people would think she had done some-
thing wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while
Mrs Pullet began to give elaborate directions to Sally
how to guard the premises from serious injury in
the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was
to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty
children were to have theirs in an ignominious
manner in the kitchen. Mrs Tulliver went out to
speak to these naughty children, supposing them to
be close at hand ; but it was not until after some
search that she found Tom leaning with rather a
hardened careless air against the white paling of the
poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on
the other side as a means of exasperating the turkey-
cock.

"Tom, you naughty boy, where's your sister?"
said Mrs Tulliver in a distressed voice.

" I don't know,'' said Tom ; his eagerness for
justice on Maggie had diminished since he had seen
clearly that it could hardly be brought about without
the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.

190 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" Why, where did you leave her?" said his mother,
looking round.

" Sitting under the tree against the pond," said
Tom, apparently indifferent to everything but the
string and the turkey-cock

" Then go and fetch her in this minute, you
naughty boy. And how could you think o' going
to the pond, and taking your sister where there
was dirt? You know she'll do mischief, if there's
mischief to be done."

It was Mrs Tulliver's way, if she blamed Tom,
to refer his misdemeanour, somehow or other, to
Maggie.

The idea of Maggie sitting alone by the pond,
roused an habitual fear in Mrs Tulliver's mind, and
she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by a
sight of that fatal child, while Tom walked — ^not
very quickly — on his way towards her.

" They're such children for the water, mine are,"
she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no
one to hear her ; " they'll be brought in dead and
drownded some day. I wish that river was far
enough."

But when she not only failed to discern Maggie,
but presently saw Tom returning from the pool alone,

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 191

this hovering fear entered and took complete pos-
session of her, and she hurried to meet him.

"Maggie's nowhere about the pond, mother/'
said Tom ; " she's gone away/'

You may conceive the terrified search for Maggie,
and the difficulty of convincing her mother that she
was not in the pond. Mrs Pullet observed that the
child might come to a worse end if she lived — there
was no knowing; and Mr Pullet, confused and
overwhelmed by this revolutionary aspect of things
— the tea deferred and the poultry alarmed by the
unusual running to and fro — took up his spud as an
instrument of search, and reached down a key to
unlock the goose-pen, as a likely place for Maggie to
lie concealed in.

Tom, after a while, started the idea that Maggie
was gone home (without thinking it necessary to
state that it was what he should have done himself
under the circumstances), and the suggestion was
seized as a comfort by his mother.

" Sister, for goodness' sake, let 'em put the horse
in the carriage and take me home — we shall perhaps
find her on the road. Lucy can't walk in her dirty
clothes," she said, looking at that innocent victim,
who was wrapped up in a shawl, and sitting with
naked feet on the sofa.

192 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Aunt Pullet was quite willing to take the shortest
means of restoring her premises to order and quiet,
and it was not long before Mrs Tulliver was in the
chaise looking anxiously at the most distant point
before her. What the father would say if Maggie
was lost? was a question that predominated over
every other.

CHAPTER XL

MAGGIE TKIES TO RUN AWAY FROM HER SHADOW.

Maggie's intentions, as usual, were on a larger
scale than Tom had imagined The resolution
that gathered in her mind, after Tom and Lucy-
had walked away, was not so simple as that of go-
ing home. No ! she would run away and go to the
gypsies, and Tom should never see her any more.
That was by no means a new idea to Maggie ; she
had been so often told she was like a gypsy, and
" half wild," that when she was miserable it seemed
to her the only way of escaping opprobrium, and
being entirely in harmony with circumstances,
would be to live in a little brown tent on the com-
mons : the gypsies, she considered, would gladly
receive her, and pay her much respect on account
of her superior knowledge. She had once mentioned
her views on this point to Tom, and suggested that
he should stain his face brown, and they should run
VOL. I. jsr

194 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

away together ; but Tom rejected the scheme with
contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves, and
hardly got anything to eat, and had nothing to drive
but a donkey. To-day, however, Maggie thought
her misery had reached a pitch at which gypsydom
was her only refuge, and she rose from her seat on
the roots of the tree with the sense that this was a
gteat crisis in her life ; she would run straight away
till she came to Dunlow Common, where there would
certainly be gypsies ; and cruel Tom, and the rest
of her relations who found fault with her, should
never see her any more. She thought of her father
as she ran along, but she reconciled herself to the
idea of parting with him, by determining that she
would secretly send him a letter by a small gypsy,
who would run away without telling where she was,
and just let him know that she was well and happy,
and always loved him very much.

Maggie soon got out of breath with running, but
by the time Tom got to the pond again, she was at
the distance of three long fields, and was on the
edge of the lane leading to the high-road. She
stopped to pant a little, reflecting that running away
was not a pleasant thing until one had got quite to
the common where the gypsies were, but her resolu-
tion had not abated : she presently passed through

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 195

the gate into the lane, not knowing where it would
lead her, for it was not this way that they came
from Dorlcote Mill to Garum Pirs, and she felt all
the safer for that, because there was no chance of
her being overtaken. But she was soon aware, not
without trembling, that there were two men coming
along the lane in front of her : she had not thought
of meeting strangers — she had been too much occu-
pied with the idea of her friends coming after her.
The formidable strangers were two shabby-looking
men with flushed faces, one of them carrying a
bundle on a stick over his shoulder: but to her
surprise, while she was dreading their disapproba-
tion as a runaway, the man with the bundle stopped,
and in a half- whining half-coaxing tone asked her
if she had a copper to give a poor man. Maggie
had a sixpence in her pocket — her uncle Glegg's
present — which she immediately drew out and gave
this poor man with a polite smile, hoping he would
feel very kindly towards her as a generous person.
" That's the only money I've got,'' she said, apolo-
getically. " Thank you, little miss,'' said the man
in a less respectful and grateful tone than Maggie
anticipated, and she even observed that he smiled
and winked at his companion. She walked on
hurriedly, but was aware that the two men were

196 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

standing still, probably to look after her, and she
presently heard them laughing loudly. Suddenly
it occurred to her that they might think she was
an idiot : Tom had said that her cropped hair made
her look like an idiot, and it was too painful an
idea to be readily forgotten. Besides, she had no
sleeves on — only a cape and a bonnet. It was clear
that she was not likely to make a favourable im-
pression on passengers, and she thought she would
turn into the fields again ; but not on the same side
of the lane as before, lest they should still be uncle
Pullet's fields. She turned through the first gate
that was not locked, and felt a delightful sense of
privacy in creeping along by the hedgerows, after
her recent humiliating encounter. She was used to
wandering about the fields by herself, and was less
timid there than on the high-road. Sometimes she
had to climb over high gates, but that was a small
evil ; she was getting out of reach very fast, and she
should probably soon come within sight of Dunlow
Common, or at least of some other common, for she
had heard her father say that you couldn't go very
far without coming to a common. She hoped so, for
she was getting rather tired and hungry, and until
she reached the gypsies there was no definite pro-
spect of bread-and-butter. It was still broad day-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 197

light, for aunt Pullet, retaining the early habits of
the Dodson family, took tea at half-past four by the
sun, and at ^ye by the kitchen clock ; so, though it
was nearly an hour since Maggie started, there was
no gathering gloom on the fields to remind her that
the night would coma Still, it seemed to her that
she had been walking a very great distance indeed,
and it was really surprising that the common did
not come within sight. Hitherto she had been in
the rich parish of Garum, where there was a great
deal of pasture -land, and she had only seen one
labourer at a distance. That was fortunate in some
respects, as labourers might be too ignorant to
understand the propriety of her wanting to go to
Dunlow Common ; yet it would have been better if
she could have met some one who would tell her
the way without wanting to know anything about
her private business. At last, however, the green
fields came to an end, and Maggie found herself
looking through the bars of a gate into a lane with
a wide margin of grass on each side of it. She had
never seen such a wide lane before, and, without her
knowing why, it gave her the impression that the
common could not be far ofi" ; perhaps it was be-
cause she saw a donkey with a log to his foot feed-
ing on the grassy margin, for she had seen a donkey

19^ THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

with that pitiable encumbrance on Dunlow Common
when she had been across it in her father's gig.
She crept through the bars of the gate and walked
on with new spirit, though not without haunting
images of ApoUyon, and a highwayman with a
pistol, and a blinking dwarf in yellow, with a mouth
from ear to ear, and other miscellaneous dangers.
For poor little Maggie had at once the timidity of
an active imagination, and the daring that comes
from overmastering impulse. She had rushed into
the adventure of seeking her unknown kindred,
the gypsies ; and now she was in this strange lane,
she hardly dared look on one side of her, lest she
should see the diabolical blacksmith in his leathern
apron, grinning at her with arms akimbo. It was
not without a leaping of the heart that she caught
sight of a small pair of bare legs sticking up, feet
uppermost, by the side of a hiUock ; they seemed
something hideously preternatural — a diabolical
kind of fungus ; for she was too much agitated at
the first glance to see the ragged clothes and the
dark shaggy head attached to them. It was a boy
asleep, and Maggie trotted along faster and more
lightly, lest she should wake him : it did not occur
to her that he was one of her friends the gypsies,
who in all probability would have very genial man-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 199

ners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in
the lane, Maggie actually saw the little semicircular
black tent with the blue smoke rising before it,
which was to be her refuge from all the bh'ghting
obloquy that had pursued her in civilised life. She
even saw a tall female figure by the column of
smoke — doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided
the tea and other groceries ; it was astonishing to
herself that she did not feel more delighted. But
it was startling to find the gypsies in a lane,
after all, and not on a common ; indeed, it was
rather disappointing; for a mysterious illimitable
common, where there were sand-pits to hide in, and
one was out of everybody's reach, had always made
part of Maggie's picture of gypsy life. She went
on, however, and thought with some comfort that
gypsies most likely knew nothing about idiots, so
there was no danger of their falling into the mis-
take of setting her down at the first glance as an idiot
It was plain she had attracted attention; for the
tall figure, who proved to be a young woman with
a baby on her arm, walked slowly to meet her.
Maggie looked up in the new face rather trem-
blingly as it approached, and was reassured by the
thought that her aunt Pullet and the rest were
right when they called her a gypsy, for this face,

200 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

with the bright dark eyes and the long hair, was
really something like what she used to see in the
glass before she cut her hair off.

*' My little lady, where are you going to ? " the
gypsy said, in a tone of coaxing deference.

It was delightful, and just what Maggie expected :
the gyi)sies saw at once that she was a little lady,
and were prepared to treat her accordingly.

" Not any farther," said Maggie, feeling as if she
were saying what she had rehearsed in a dream. "I'm
come to stay with you^ please."

" That's pritty ; come, then. Why, what a nice
little lady you are, to be sure," said the gypsy, tak-
ing her by the hand. Maggie thought her very
agreeable, but wished she had not been so dirty.

There was quite a group round the fire when they
reached it. An old gypsy- woman was seated on the
ground nursing her knees, and occasionally poking
a skewer into the round kettle that sent forth an
odorous steam : two small shock-headed children
were lying prone and resting on their elbows some-
thing like small sphinxes ; and a placid donkey was
bending his head over a tall girl, who, lying on her
back, was scratching his nose and indulging him
with a bite of excellent stolen hay. The slanting
sunlight fell kindly upon them, and the scene was

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 201

really very pretty and comfortable, Maggie thought,
only she hoped they would soon set out the tea-cups.
Everything would be quite charming when she had
taught the gypsies to use a washing-basin, and to
feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing,
though, that the young woman began to speak to
the old one in a language which Maggie did not
understand, while the tall girl, who was feeding the
donkey, sat up and stared at her without offering
any salutation. At last the old woman said —

"What, my pretty lady, are you come to stay
with us ? Sit ye down, and tell us where you come
from."

It was just like a story : Maggie liked to be called
pretty lady and treated in this way. She sat down
and said —

"I'm come from home because I'm unhappy, and I
mean to be a gypsy. Ill live with you, if you like,
and I can teach you a great many things."

*' Such a clever Kttle lady," said the woman with
the baby, sitting down by Maggie, and allowing baby
to crawl ; " and such a pritty bonnet and frock,'' she
added, taking off Maggie's bonnet and looking at it
while she made an observation to the old woman,
in the unknown language. The tall girl snatched
the bonnet and put it on her own head hind-fore-

202 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

most with a grin ; but Maggie was determined not to
show any weakness on this subject, as if she were
susceptible about her bonnet.

"I don't want to wear a bonnet," she said, "I'd
rather wear a red handkerchief, like yours " (looking
at her friend by her side) ; " my hair was quite long
till yesterday, when I cut it off : but I daresay it
will grow again very soon," she added apologetically,
thinking it probable the gypsies had a strong preju-
dice in favour of long hair. And Maggie had for-
gotten even her hunger at that moment in the desire
to conciliate gypsy opinion.

" 0 what a nice little lady ! — and rich, I'm sure,"
said the old woman. " Didn't you live in a beauti-
ful house at home ? "

" Yes, my home is pretty, and I'm very fond of
the river, where we go fisliing — but I'm often very
unhappy. I should have liked to bring my books
with me, but I came away in a hurry, you know.
But I can tell you almost everything there is in my
books, I've read them so many times — and that will
amuse you. And I can tell you something about
Geography too — ^that's about the world we live in —
very useful and interesting. Did you ever hear
about Columbus ? "

Maggie's eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 203

to flush — she was really beginning to instruct the
gypsies, and gaining great influence over them. The
gypsies themselves were not without amazement at
this talk, though their attention was divided by the
contents of Maggie's pocket, which the friend at
her right hand had by this time emptied without
attracting her notice.

" Is that where you live, my little lady ? " said the
old woman, at the mention of Columbus.

"0 no ! " said Maggie, with some pity ; " Columbus
was a very wonderful man, who found out half the
world, and they put chains on him and treated him
very badly, you know — it's in my Catechism of
Geography — but perhaps it's rather too long to tell
before tea ... / want my tea so."

The last words burst from Maggie, in spite of
herself, with a sudden drop from patronising in-
struction to simple peevishness.

" Why, she's hungry, poor little lady," said the
younger woman. " Give her some o' the cold victual.
You've been walking a good way, I'll be bound, my
dear. Where's your home ? "

" It's Dorlcote Mill, a good way off," said Maggie.
" My father is Mr TuUiver, but we mustn't let him
know where I am, else he'll fetch me home again.
Where does the queen of the gypsies live ? "

204 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" What ! do you want to go to her, my little lady?"
said the younger woman. The tall girl meanwhile
was constantly staring at Maggie and grinning.
Her manners were certainly not agreeable.

" No," said Maggie, "I'm only thinking that if she
isn't a very good queen you might be glad when she
died, and you could choose another. If I was a
queen, I'd be a very good queen, and kind to every-
body."

" Here's a bit o' nice victual, then," said the old
woman, handing* to Maggie a lump of dry bread,
which she had taken from a bag of scraps, and a
piece of cold bacon.

" Thank you," said Maggie, looking at the food
without taking it ; " but will you give me some bread-
and-butter and tea instead ? I don't like bacon."

*' We've got no tea nor butter," said the old
woman with something like a scowl, as if she were
getting tired of coaxing.

"0, a Little bread and treacle would do," said
Mao^orie.

" We ha'n't got no treacle," said the old woman
crossly, whereupon there followed a sharp dialogue
between the two women in their unknown tongue,
and one of the small sphinxes snatched at the bread-
and-bacon, and began to eat it. At this moment

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 205

the tall girl, who had gone a few yards off, came
back and said something which produced a strong
effect. The old woman, seeming to forget Maggie's
hunger, poked the skewer into the pot with new
vigour, and the younger crept under the tent, and
reached out some platters and spoons. Maggie
trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would
come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave
a shrill cry, and presently came running up the
boy, whom Maggie had passed as he was sleeping —
a rough urchin about the age of Tom. He stared
at Maggie, and there ensued much incomprehensible
chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite
sure she should begin to cry before long: the
gypsies didn't seem to mind her at all, and she felt
quite weak among them. But the springing tears
were checked by a new terror, when two men came
up, whose approach had been the cause of the sud-
den excitement. The elder of the two carried a bag,
which he flung down, addressing the women in a
loud and scolding tone, which they answered by a
shower of treble sauciness ; while a black cur ran
barking up to Maggie, and threw her into a tremor
that only found a new cause in the curses with
which the younger man called the dog off, and
gave him a rap with a great stick he held in his hand.

206 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Maggie felt that it was impossible slie should
ever be queen of these people, or ever communicate
to them amusing and useful knowledge.

Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about
Maggie, for they looked at her, and the tone of
the conversation became of that pacific kind which
implies curiosity on one side and the power of
satisfying it on the other. At last the younger
woman said in her previous deferential coaxing
tone —

" This nice little lady's come to live with us :
aren't you glad?"

" Ay, very glad," said the younger man, who was
looking at Maggie's silver thimble and other small
matters that had been taken from her pocket. He
returned them all except the thimble to the younger
woman, with some observation, and she immedi-
ately restored them to Maggie's pocket, while the
men seated themselves, and began to attack the
contents of the kettle — a stew of meat and potatoes
— ^wHch had been taken off the fire and turned out
into a yellow platter.

Maggie began to think that Tom must be right
about the gj^psies — they must certainly be thieves,
unless the man meant to return her thimble by-and-
by. She would willingly have given it to him, for

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 207

she was not at all attached to her thimble ; but the
idea that she was among thieves prevented her from
feeling any comfort in the revival of deference and
attention towards her — all thieves except Eobin
Hood were wicked people. The women saw she was
frightened.

" We've got nothing nice for a lady to eat," said
the old woman, in her coaxing tone. " And she's so
hungry, sweet little lady."

" Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o' this,"
said the younger woman, handing some of the stew
on a brown dish with an iron spoon to Maggie, who,
remembering that the old woman had seemed angry
with her for not liking the bread-and-bacon, dared
not refuse the stew, though fear had chased away
her appetite. If her father would but come by in
the gig and take her up I Or even if Jack the
Giantkiller, or Mr Greatheart, or St George who
slew the dragon on the halfpennies, would happen
to pass that way ! But Maggie thought with a sink-
ing heart that these heroes were never seen in the
neighbourhood of St Ogg's — nothing very wonder-
ful ever came there.

Maggie Tulliver, you perceive, was by no means
that well-trained, well-informed young person that
a small female of eight or nine necessarily is in

208 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

these days : she had only been to school a year at
St Ogg's, and had so few books that she sometimes
read the dictionary ; so that in travelling over her
small mind you would have found the most unexpect-
ed ignorance as well as unexpected knowledge. She
could have informed you that there was such a
word as "polygamy/" and being also acquainted
with "polysyllable," she had deduced the conclu-
sion that "poly" meant "many;" but she had had
no idea that gypsies were not well supplied with
groceries, and her thoughts generally were the
oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind
dreams.

Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a
rapid modification in the last five minutes. Prom
having considered them very respectful companions,
amenable to instruction, she had begun to think
that they meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it
was dark, and cut up her body for gradual cooking :
the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed old
man was in fact the devil, who might drop that
transparent disguise at any moment, and turn either
into the grinning blacksmith or else a fiery-eyed
monster with dragon's wings. It was no use trying
to eat the stew, and yet the thing she most dreaded
was to ofiend the gypsies, by betraying her ex-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 209

tremely unfavourable opinion of them, and she
wondered with a keenness of interest that no
theologian could have exceeded, whether, if the
devil were really present, he would know her
thoughts.

" What ! you don't like the smell of it, my dear,"
said the young woman, observing that Maggie did
not even take a spoonful of the stew. " Try a bit
— come."

"No, thank you,'' said Maggie, summoning all
her force for a desperate effort, and trying to smile
in a friendly way. " I haven't time, I think — it
seems getting darker. I think I must go home
now, and come again another day, and then I can
bring you a basket with some jam-tarts and
things."

Maggie rose from her seat as she threw out this
illusory prospect, devoutly hoping that Apollyon
was gullible ; but her hope sank when the old
gypsy-woman said, "Stop a bit, stop a bit, little
lady — we'll take you home, all safe, when weVe
done supper : you shall ride home, like a lady."

Maggie sat down again, with little faith in this
promise, though she presently saw the tall girl put-
ting a bridle on the donkey, and throwing a couple
of bags on his back.

VOL. L O

210 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" Now, then, little missis," said the younger man,
rising, and leading the donkey forward, "tell us
where you live — ^what's the name o' the place?"

" Dorlcote Mill is my home,'' said Maggie, eagerly.
" My father is Mr Tulliver — he lives there."

" What ! a big mill a little way this side o' St
Ogg's?''

" Yes,'' said Maggie. " Is it far off? I think I
should like to walk there, if you please."

"No, no, it'll be getting dark, we must make
haste. And the donkey '11 carry you as nice as can
be — you'll see."

He lifted Maggie as he spoke, and set her on the
donkey. She felt relieved that it was not the old
man who seemed to be going with her, but she had
only a trembling hope that she was really going
home.

"Here's your pretty bonnet," said the younger
woman, putting that recently despised but now
welcome article of costume on Maggie's head ; " and
youll say we've been very good to you, won't you ?
and what a nice little lady we said you was."

" 0, yes, thank you," said Maggie, " I'm very
much obliged to you. But I wish you'd go with
me too." She thought anything was better than
going with one of the dreadful men alone : it would

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 211

be more cheerful to be murdered by a larger
party.

"Ah, you're fondest o' me, aren't you?" said the
woman. "But I can't go — you'll go too fast for
me."

It now appeared that the man also was to be
seated on the donkey, holding Maggie before him,
and she was as incapable of remonstrating against
this arrangement as the donkey himself, though
no nightmare had ever seemed to her more hor-
rible. When the woman had patted her on the
back, and said, " good-by,'' the donkey, at a strong
hint from the man's stick, set off at a rapid walk
along the lane towards the point Maggie had come
from an hour ago, while the tall girl and the rough
urchin, also furnished with sticks, obligingly escorted
them for the first hundred yards, with much scream-
ing and thwacking.

Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight ex-
cursion with her phantom lover, was more terrified
than poor Maggie in this entirely natural ride on a
short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who
considered that he was earning half-a-crown. The
red light of the setting sun seemed to have a por-
tentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of
the second donkey with the log on its foot must

212 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

surely have some connection. Two low thatched
cottages — the only houses they passed in this Ian©
— seemed to add to its dreariness : they had no
windows to speak of, and the doors were closed : it
was probable that they were inhabited by witches,
and it was a relief to find that the donkey did not
stop there.

At last — 0, sight of joy ! — ^this lane, the longest
in the world, was coming to an end, was opening on
a broad high-road, where there was actually a coach
passing ! And there was a finger-post at the cor-
ner : she had surely seen that finger-post before
— " To St Ogg's, 2 miles/' The gypsy really meant
to take her home, then : he was probably a good
man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at
the thought that she didn't like coming with him
alone. This idea became stronger as she felt more
and more certain that she knew the road quite well,
and she was considering how she might open a con-
versation with the injured gypsy, and not only
gratify his feelings but efiace the impression of
her cowardice, when, as they reached a cross-road,
Maggie caught sight of some one coming on a
white-faced horse.

"0, stop, stop!" she cried out. "There's my
father ! 0, father, father !"

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 213

The sudden joy was almost painful, and before
her father reached her, she was sobbing. Great was
Mr TuUiver's wonder, for he had made a round
from Basset, and had not yet been home.

"Why, what's the meaning o' this?" he said, check-
ing his horse, while Maggie slipped from the donkey
and ran to her father's stirrup.

" The little miss lost herself, I reckon," said the
gypsy. " She'd come to our tent at the far end o'
Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her where she
said her home was. It's a good way to come arter
being on the tramp all day."

" 0, yes, father, he's been very good to bring me
home," said Maggie. "A very kind, good man !"

" Here, then, my man," said Mr Tulliver, taking
out five shillings. " It's the best day's work you
ever did. I couldn't afford to lose the little wench ;
here, lift her up before me."

*' Why, Maggie, how's this, how's this ?" he said,
as they rode along, while she laid her head against
her father, and sobbed. "How came you to be
rambling about and lose yourself?"

" 0, father," sobbed Maggie, " I ran away be-
cause I was so unhappy — Tom was so angry with
me. I couldn't bear it."

" Pooh, pooh," said Mr Tulliver, soothingly,

214 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" you mustn't think o' running away from father.
What 'ud father do without his little wench ?"
" 0 no, I never will again, father — never."
Mr Tulliver spoke his mind very strongly when
he reached home that evening, and the effect was
seen in the remarkable fact, that Maggie never
heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt
from Tom, about this foolish business of her run-
ning away to the gypsies. Maggie was rather awe-
stricken by this unusual treatment, and sometimes
thought that her conduct had been too wicked to
be alluded to.

CHAPTER XII.

ME AND MRS GLEGG AT HOME.

In order to see Mr and Mrs Glegg at home, we
must enter the town of St Ogg's — that venerable
town with the red-fluted roofs and the broad ware-
house gables, where the black ships unlade them-
selves of their burthens from the far north, and
carry away, in exchange, the precious inland pro-
ducts, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces,
which my refined readers have doubtless become
acquainted with through the medium of the best
classic pastorals.

It is one of those old, old towns which impress
one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as
much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding
galleries of the white ants : a town which carries
the traces of its long growth and history like a
millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in
the same spot between the river and the low hill

216 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

from the time when the Eoman legions turned their
backs on it from the camp on the hill-side, and the
long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked
with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It
is a town "familiar with forgotten years." The
shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks there
fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-
time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the
dreadful heathen Dane, who was stabbed in the
midst of his warriors by the sword of an invisible
avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings like a
white mist from his tumulus on the hill, and hovers
in the court of the old hall by the river-side — the
spot where he was thus miraculously slain in the
days before the old hall was built. It was the Nor-
mans who began to build that fine old hall, which
is like the town, telling of the thoughts and hands
of widely- sundered generations ; but it is all so old
that we look with loving pardon at its inconsisten-
cies, and are well content that they who built the
stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic faQade
and towers of finest small brickwork with the trefoil
ornament, and the windows and battlements defined
with stone, did not sacrilegiously pull down the
ancient half-timbered body with its oak -roofed
banqueting-hall.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 217

But older even than this old hall is perhaps the
bit of wall now built into the belfry of the parish
church, and said to be a remnant of the original
chapel dedicated to St Ogg, the patron saint of this
ancient town, of whose history I possess several manu-
script versions. I incline to the briefest, since, if it
should not be wholly true, it is at least likely to
contain the least falsehood. " Ogg the son of Beorl,"
says my private hagiographer, " was a boatman who
gained a scanty living by ferrying passengers across
the river Floss. And it came to pass, one evening
when the winds were high, that there sat moaning
by the brink of the river a woman with a child in
her arms ; and she was clad in rags, and had a worn
and withered look, and she craved to be rowed across
the river. And the men thereabout questioned her,
and said ' Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the
river? Tarry till the morning, and take shelter
here for the night : so shalt thou be wise, and not
foolish." Still she went on to mourn and crave.
But Ogg the son of Beorl came up and said, * I
will ferry thee across : it is enough that thy heart
needs it.' And he ferried her across. And it came
to pass, when she stepped ashore, that her rags were
turned into robes of flowing white, and her face be-
came bright with exceeding beauty, and there was

218 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

a glory around it, so that she shed a light on the
water like the moon in its brightness. And she
said — ' Ogg the son of Beorl, thou art blessed in
that thou didst not question and wrangle with the
heart's need, but wast smitten with pity, and didst
straightway relieve the same. And from hence-
forth whoso steps into thy boat shall be in no peril
from the storm ; and whenever it puts forth to the
rescue, it shall save the lives both of men and beasts.'
And when the floods came, many were saved by
reason of that blessing on the boat. But when
Ogg the son of Beorl died, behold, in the parting
of his soul, the boat loosed itself from its moorings,
and was floated with the ebbing tide in great swift-
ness to the ocean, and was seen no more. Yet it
was witnessed in the floods of after-time, that at
the coming on of even, Ogg the son of Beorl was
always seen with his boat upon the wide-spreading
waters, and the Blessed Virgiu sat in the prow,
shedding a light around as of the moon in its bright-
ness, so that the rowers in the gathering darkness
took heart and pulled anew."

This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-ofi* time
the visitation of the floods, which, even when they
left human life untouched, were widely fatal to the
helpless cattle, and swept as sudden death over all

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 219

smaller living tilings. But tlie town knew worse
troubles even than the floods — troubles of the civil
wars, when it was a continual fighting-place, where
first Puritans thanked God for the blood of the
Loyalists, and then Loyalists thanked God for the
blood of the Puritans. Many honest citizens lost all
their possessions for conscience' sake in those times,
and went forth beggared from their native town.
Doubtless there are many houses standing now on
which those honest citizens turned their backs in
sorrow : quaint-gabled houses looking on the river,
janamed between newer warehouses, and penetrated
by surprising passages, which turn and turn at sharp
angles till they lead you out on a muddy strand
overflowed continually by tlie rushing tide. Every-
where the brick houses have a mellow look, and in
Mrs Glegg's day there was no incongruous new-
fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop windows,
no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt to
make fine old red St Ogg's wear the air of a town
that sprang up yesterday. The shop windows
were small and unpretending ; for the farmers' wives
and daughters who came to do their shopping
on market-days were not to be withdrawn from
their regular, well-known shops ; and the trades-
men had no wares intended for customers who

220 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

would go on their way and be seen no more. All !
even Mrs Glegg's day seems far back in the past
now, separated from us by changes that widen the
years. War and the rumour of war had then died
out from the minds of men, and if they were ever
thought of by the farmers in drab greatcoats, who
shook the grain out of their sample-bags and
buzzed over it in the full market-place, it was as a
state of things that belonged to a past golden age,
when prices were high. Surely the time was gone
for ever when the broad river could bring up unwel-
come ships : Eussia was only the place where the
linseed came from — the more the better — making
grist for the great vertical millstones with their
scythe-like arms, roaring and grinding and carefully
sweeping as if an informing soul were in them.
The Catholics, bad harvests, and the mysterious
fluctuations of trade, were the three evils mankind
had to fear : even the floods had not been great of
late years. The mind of St Ogg's did not look ex-
tensively before or after. It inherited a long past
without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the
spirits that walked the streets. Since the centuries
when St Ogg with his boat and the Virgin Mother
at the prow had been seen on the wide water, so
many memories had been left behind, and had gra-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 221

dually vanished like the receding hill- tops ! And
the present time was like the level plain where men
lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, think-
ing to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant
forces that used to shake the earth are for ever laid
to sleep. The days were gone when people could
be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less
change it : the Catholics were formidable because
they would lay hold of government and property,
and bum men alive ; not because any sane and
honest parishioner of St Ogg's could be brought to
believe in the Pope. One aged person remembered
how a rude multitude had been swayed when John
Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a
long while it had not been expected of preachers
that they should shake the souls of men. An oc-
casional burst of fervour, in Dissenting pulpits,
on the subject of infant baptism, was the only
symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober times when
men had done with change. Protestantism sat at
ease, unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism :
Dissent was an inheritance along with a superior
pew and a business connection ; and Churchmanship
only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish
habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery
and chandlering lines, though not incompatible with

222 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

prosperous wholesale dealing. But with the Catho-
lic Question had come a slight wind of controversy
to break the calm : the elderly rector had become
occasionally historical and argumentative, and Mr
Spray, the Independent minister, had begun to
preach political sermons, in which he distinguished
with much subtlety between his fervent belief in the
right of the Catholics to the franchise and his fervent
belief in their eternal perdition. But most of Mr
Spray's hearers were incapable of following his
subtleties, and many old-fashioned Dissenters were
much pained by his "siding with the Catholics;''
while others thought he had better let politics alone
Public spirit was not held in high esteem at St
Ogg's, and men who busied themselves with politi-
cal questions were regarded with some suspicion as
dangerous characters : they were usually persons
who had little or no business of their own to man-
age, or, if they had, were likely enough to become
insolvent.

This was the general aspect of things at St Ogg's
in Mrs Glegg's day, and at that particular period in
her family history when she had had her quarrel
with Mr TuUiver. It was a time when ignorance
Vas much more comfortable than at present, and
was received with all the honours in very good

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 223

society, without being obliged to dress itself in an
elaborate costume of knowledge ; a time when cheap
periodicals were not, and when country surgeons
never thought of asking their female patients if they
were fond of reading, but simply took it for granted
that they preferred gossip ; a time when ladies in
rich silk-gowns wore large pockets, in which they
carried a mutton -bone to secure them against
cramp. Mrs Glegg carried such a bone, which she
had inherited from her grandmother with a brocaded
gown that would stand up empty, like a suit of
armour, and a silver-headed walking-stick ; for the
Dodson family had been respectable for many gen-
erations.

Mrs Glegg had both a front and a back parlour ^
in her excellent house at St Ogg's, so that she had
two points of view from which she could observe
the weaknesses of her fellow-beings, and reinforce
her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of
mind. From her front windows she could look down
the Tofton Koad, leading out of St Ogg's, and
note the growing tendency to " gadding about '' in
the wives of men not retired from business, together
with a practice of wearing woven cotton stockings,
which opened a dreary prospect for the coming
generation ; and from her back windows she could

224 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

look down the pleasant garden and orchard which
stretched to the river, and observe the folly of Mr
Glegg in spending his time among " them flowers
and vegetables." For Mr Glegg, having retired
from active business as a wool- stapler, for the pur-
pose of enjoying himself through the rest of his life,
had found this last occupation so much more severe
than his business, that he had been driven into
amateur hard labour as a dissipation, and habitually
relaxed by doing the work of two ordinary gar-
deners. The economising of a gardener's wages
might perhaps have induced Mrs Glegg to wink at
this folly, if it were possible for a healthy female
mind even to simulate respect for a husband's
hobby. But it is well known that this conjugal
complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of
the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities
of a wife as a constituted check on her husband's
pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or
commendable kind.

Mr Glegg on his side, too, had a double source
of mental occupation, which gave every promise of
being inexhaustible. On the one hand, he surprised
himself by his discoveries in natural history, finding
that his piece of garden-ground contained wonderful
caterpillars, slugs, and insects, which, so far as he

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 225

had heard, had never before attracted human ob-
servation ; and he noticed remarkable coincidences
between these zoological phenomena and the great
events of that time, — as, for example, that before the
burning of York Minster there had been mysterious
serpentine marks on the leaves of the rose-trees,
together with an unusual prevalence of slugs, which
he had been puzzled to know the meaning of, until
it flashed upon him with this melancholy conflagra-
tion. (Mr Glegg had an unusual amount of men-
tal activity, which, when disengaged from the wool
business, naturally made itself a pathway in other
directions.) And his second subject of meditation
was the " contrairiness " of the female mind, as
typically exhibited in Mrs Glegg. That a creature
made — in a genealogical sense — out of a man's rib,
and in this particular case maintained in the highest
respectability without any trouble of her own, should
be normally in a state of contradiction to the bland-
est propositions and even to the most accommodating
concessions, was a mystery in the scheme of things
to which he had often in vain sought a clue in the
early chapters of Genesis. Mr Glegg had chosen the
eldest Miss Dodson as a handsome embodiment of
female prudence and thrift, and being himself of a
money-getting, money-keeping turn, had calculated
VOL. I. p

226 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

on much conjugal harmony. But in that curious
compound, the feminine character, it may easily
happen that the flavour is unpleasant in spite of
excellent ingredients ; and a fine systematic stingi-
ness may be accompanied with a seasoning that quite
spoils its relish. Now good Mr Glegg himself was
stingy in the most amiable manner : his neighbours
called him "near," which always means that the
person in question is a lovable skinflint. If you
expressed a preference for cheese-parings, Mr Glegg
would remember to save them for you, with a good-
natured delight in gTatifying your palate, and he
was given to pet all animals which required no
appreciable keep. There was no humbug or hy-
pocrisy about Mr Glegg : his eyes would have
watered with true feeling over the sale of a widow's
furniture, which a five-pound note from his side-
pocket would have prevented ; but a donation of
five pounds to a person "in a small way of life" would
have seemed to him a mad kind of lavishness rather
than "charity," which had always presented itself
to him as a contribution of small aids, not a neutral-
ising of misfortune. And Mr Glegg was just as
fond of saving other people's money as his own : he
would have ridden as far round to avoid a turnpike
when his expenses were to be paid for him, as when

THE MILL OIT THE FLOSS. 227

they were to come out of his own pocket, and was
quite zealous in trying to induce indififerent ac-
quaintances to adopt a cheap substitute for blacking.
This inalienable habit of saving, as an end in itself,
belonged to the industrious men of business of a
former generation, who made their fortunes slowly,
almost as the tracking of the fox belongs to the
harrier — it constituted them a "race," which is
nearly lost in these days of rapid money-getting, when
lavishness comes close on the back of want In old-
fashioned times, an " independence " was hardly ever
made without a little miserliness as a condition, and
you would have found that quality in every provin-
cial district, combined with characters as various as
the fruits from which we can extract acid. The true
Harpagons were always marked and exceptional cha-
racters : not so the worthy taxpayers, who, having
once pinched from real necessity, retained even in
the midst of their comfortable retirement, with
their wall-fruit and wine-bins, the habit of regarding
life as an ingenious process of nibbling out one's
livelihood without leaving any perceptible deficit,
and who would have been as immediately prompted
to give up a newly-taxed luxury when they had
their clear five hundred a-year, as when they had only
five hundred pounds of capital. Mr Glegg was one

228 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

of these men, found so impracticable by chancellors
of the exchequer ; and knowing this, you will be the
better able to understand why he had not swerved
from the conviction that he had made an eligible
marriage, in spite of the too pungent seasoning that
nature had given to the eldest Miss Dodson's vir-
tues. A man with an affectionate disposition, who
finds a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of
life, easily comes to persuade himself that no other
woman would have suited him so well, and does a
little daily snapping and quarrelKng without any
sense of alienation. Mr Glegg, being of a reflective
turn, and no longer occupied with wool, had much
wondering meditation on the peculiar constitution
of the female mind as unfolded to him in his domes-
tic life ; and yet he thought Mrs Glegg's household
ways a model for her sex : it struck him as a piti-
able irregularity in other women if they did not roll
up their table-napkins with the same tightness and
emphasis as Mrs Glegg did, if their pastry had a less
leathery consistence, and their damson cheese a less
venerable hardness than hers : nay, even the pecu-
liar combination of grocery and drug-like odours in
Mrs Glegg's private cupboard impressed him as the
only right thing in the way of cupboard smells. I
am not sure that he would not have lonered for the

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 229

quarrelling again, if it had ceased for an entire week;
and it is certain that an acquiescent mild wife would
have left his meditations comparatively jejune and
barren of mystery.

Mr Glegg's unmistakable kind-heartedness was
shown in this, that it pained him more to see his
wife at variance with others — even with Dolly, the
servant — than to be in a state of cavil with her
himself ; and the quarrel between her and Mr TulH-
ver vexed him so much that it quite nullified the
pleasure he would otherwise have had in the state
of his early cabbages, as he walked in his garden
before breakfast the next morning. Still he went in
to breakfast with some slight hope that, now Mrs
Glegg had "slept upon it,'' her anger might be
subdued enough to give way to her usually strong
sense of family decorum. She had been used to
boast that there had never been any of those deadly
quarrels among the Dodsons which had disgraced
other families ; that no Dodson had ever been " cut
off with a shilling," and no cousin of the Dodsons
disowned ; as, indeed, why should they be ? for
they had no cousins who had not money out at
use, or some houses of their own, at the very least.

There was one evening-cloud which had always
disappeared from Mrs Glegg's brow when she sat

230 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

at the breakfast-table; it was her fuzzy front of
curls ; for as sbe occupied herself in household mat-
ters in the morning, it would have been a mere
extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to
the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled
front. By half-past ten decorum demanded the
front: until then Mrs Glegg could economise it,
and society would never be any the wiser. But the
absence of that cloud only left it more apparent
that the cloud of severity remained ; and Mr Glegg,
perceiving this, as he sat down to his milk-porridge,
which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morn-
ing hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the
first remark to Mrs Glegg, lest, to so delicate an
article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should
do mischief People who seem to enjoy their ill-
temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition
by inflicting privations on themselves. That was
Mrs Glegg's way : she made her tea weaker than
usual this morning, and declined butter. It was a
hard case that a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so
highly capable of using any opportunity, should not
meet with a single remark from Mr Glegg on which
to exercise itself But by-and-by it appeared that
his silence would answer the purpose, for he heard

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 231

himself apostrophised at last in that tone peculiar to
the wife of one's bosom.

" Well, Mr Glegg ! it's a poor return I get for
making you the wife I've made you all these years.
If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd better ha'
known it before my poor father died, and then, when
I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere — as
the choice was offered me."

Mr Glegg paused from his porridge and looked
up — not with any new amazement, but simply with
that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard
constant mysteries.

"Why, Mrs G., what have I done now?"

"Done now, Mr Glegg? done now? .... I'm
sorry for you."

Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr
Glegg reverted to his porridge.

"There's husbands in the world," continued Mrs
Glegg after a pause, "as 'ud have known how to do
something different to siding with everybody else
against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong, and
you can teach me better — but I've allays heard as
it's the husband's place to stand by the wife, in-
stead o' rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult
her.''

232 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Now, what call have you to say that?" said
Mr Glegg, rather warmly, for though a kind man,
he was not as meek as Moses. " When did I re-
joice or triumph over you ?"

" There's ways o' doing things worse than speak-
ing out plain, Mr Glegg. I'd sooner you'd tell me
to my face as you make light of me, than try to
make out as everybody's in the right but me, and
come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've
hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as
if I was the dirt under your feet."

" Sulk at you ?" said Mr Glegg, in a tone of angry
facetiousness. " You're like a tipsy man as thinks
everybody's had too much but himself."

"Don't lower yourself with using coarse lan-
guage to me, Mr Glegg ! It makes you look very
small, though you can't see yourself," said Mrs
Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. " A man
in your place should set an example, and talk more
sensible.'*

" Yes ; but will you listen to sense ? " retorted
Mr Glegg, sharply. " The best sense I can talk to
you is what I said last night — as you're i' the
wrong to think o' calling in your money, when it's
safe enough if you'd let it alone, all because of a
bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you'd ha' altered

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 233

J our mind this morning. But if you'd like to call
it in, don't do it in a hurry now, and breed more
enmity in the family — but wait till there's a pretty
mortgage to be had without any trouble. You'd
have to set the lawyer to work now to find an in-
vestment, and make no end o' expense."

Mrs Glegg felt there was really something in this,
but she tossed her head and emitted a guttural in-
terjection to indicate that her silence was only an
armistice, not a peace. And, in fact, hostilities soon
broke out again.

" I'll thank you for my cup o' tea, now, Mrs G.,"
said Mr Glegg, seeing that she did not proceed to
give it him as usual, when he had finished his
porridge. She lifted the teapot with a slight toss
of the head, and said,

" I'm glad to hear you'll thank me, Mr Glegg.
It's little thanks / get for what I do for folks i'
this world. Though there's never a woman o' your
side i' the family, Mr Glegg, as is fit to stand up
with me, and I'd say it if I was on my dying bed.
Not but what I've allays conducted myself civil to
your kin, and there isn't one of 'em can say the con-
trary, though my equils they aren't, and nobody shall
make me say it."

"You'd better leave finding fault wi' my kin till

234 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

yoTiVe left off quarrelling with your own, Mrs G.,"
said Mr Glegg, with angry sarcasm. " I'll trouble
you for the milk-jug.''

" That's as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr
Glegg," said the lady, pouring out the milk with
unusual profuseness, as much as to say, if he wanted
milk, he should have it with a vengeance. " And
you know it's false. I'm not the woman to quarrel
with my own kin : you may, for I've known you
do it.''

" Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leav-
ing your sister's house in a tantrum ?"

" I'd no quarrel wi' my sister, Mr Glegg, and it's
false to say it. Mr TuUiver's none o' my blood, and
it was him quarrelled with me, and drove me out o'
the house. But perhaps you'd have had me stay and
be swore at, Mr Glegg ; perhaps you was vexed
not to hear more abuse and foul language poured
out upo' your own wife. But, let me tell you, it's
your disgrace."

" Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish ?'*
said Mr Glegg, getting hot. "A woman, with
everything provided for her, and allowed to keep
her own money the same as if it was settled on her,
and with a gig new stuffed and lined at no end o'
expense, and provided for when I die beyond any-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 235

tMng she could expect .... to go on T this way,
biting and snapping like a mad dog ! It's beyond
everything as God A'mighty should ha' made women
so." (These last words were uttered in a tone of
sorrowful agitation. Mr Glegg pushed his tea from
him, and tapped the table with both his hands.)

" Well, Mr Glegg ! if those are your feelings, it's
best they should be known," said Mrs Glegg, taking
off her napkin, and folding it in an excited manner.
" But if you talk o' my being provided for beyond
what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I'd a
right to expect a many things as I don't find. And
as to my being like a mad dog, it's well if you're
not cried shame on by the county for your treat-
ment of me, for it's what I can't bear, and I won't
bear" ....

Here Mrs Glegg's voice intimated that she was
going to cry, and, breaking off from speech, she rang
the bell violently.

" Sally," she said, rising from her chair, and
speaking in rather a choked voice, " light a fire up-
stairs, and put the blinds down. Mr Glegg, you'll
please to order what you'd like for dinner. I shall
have gruel."

Mrs Glegg walked across the room to the small
book-case, and took down Baxter's "Saints' Ever-

236 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

lasting Eest," which she carried with her up-stairs.
It was the book she was accustomed to lay open
before her on special occasions : on wet Sunday
mornings, or when she heard of a death in the
family, or when, as in this case, her quarrel with
Mr Glegg had been set an octave higher than usual.
But Mrs Glegg carried something else up-stairs
with her, which, together with the " Saints' Eest "
and the gruel, may have had some influence in
gradually calming her feelings, and making it pos-
sible for her to endure existence on the ground-
floor shortly before tea-time. This was, partly, Mr
Glegg' s suggestion, that she would do well to let
her five hundred lie still until a good investment
turned up ; and, further, his parenthetic hint at his
handsome provision for her in case of his death.
Mr Glegg, like all men of his stamp, was extremely
reticent about his will ; and Mrs Glegg, in her
gloomier moments, had forebodings that, like other
husbands of whom she had heard, he might cherish
the mean project of heightening her grief at his
death by leaving her poorly ofi*, in which case she
was firmly resolved that she would have scarcely
any weeper on her bonnet, and would cry no more
than if he had been a second husband. But if he

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 237

had really shown her any testamentary tenderness,
it would be affecting to think of him, poor man,
when he was gone ; and even his foolish fuss about
the flowers and garden-stuff, and his insistance on
the subject of snails, would be touching when it was
once fairly at an end. To survive Mr Glegg, and
talk eulogistically of him as a man who might have
his weaknesses, but who had done the right thing
by her, notwithstanding his numerous poor rela-
tions— to have sums of interest coming in more fre-
quently, and secrete it in various comers, baffling to
the most ingenious of thieves (for, to Mrs Glegg's
mind, banks and strong-boxes would have nullified
the pleasure of property — she might as well have
taken her food in capsules) — finally, to be looked up
to by her own family and the neighbourhood, so as
no woman can ever hope to be who has not the
prseterite and present dignity comprised in being a
" widow well left," — all this made a flattering and
conciliatory view of the future. So that when good
Mr Glegg, restored to good-humour by much hoeing,
and moved by the sight of his wife's empty chair,
with her knitting rolled up in the comer, went up-
stairs to her, and observed that the bell had been
tolling for poor Mr Morton, Mrs Glegg answered

'238 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

magnanimously, quite as if she had been an un-
injured woman, "Ah ! then, there'll be a good busi-
ness for somebody to take to."

Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this
time, for it was nearly five o'clock ; and if people
are to quarrel often, it follows as a corollary that
their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond certain
limits.

Mr and Mrs Glegg talked quite amicably about
the Tullivers that evening. Mr Glegg went the
length of admitting that Tulliver was a sad man for
getting into hot water, and was like enough to run
through his property ; and ^Irs Glegg, meeting this
acknowledgment half-way, declared that it was be-
neath her to take notice of such a man's conduct,
and that, for her sister's sake, she would let him
keep the five hundred a while longer, for when she
put it out on a mortgage she should only get four
per cent.

CHAPTER XIII.

ME TULLIVER FUETHER ENTANGLES THE
SKEIN OF LIFE.

Owing to tliis new a4justment of Mrs Glegg's
thoughts, Mrs Pullet found her task of mediation
the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs Glegg, indeed,
checked her rather sharply for thinking it would be
necessary to tell her elder sister what was the right
mode of behaviour in family matters. Mrs Pullet's
argument that it would look ill in the neighbour-
hood if people should have it in their power to say
that there was a quarrel in the family, was particu-
larly offensive. If the family name never suffered
except through Mrs Glegg, Mrs Pullet might lay
her head on her pillow in perfect confidence.

"It's not to be expected, I suppose," observed
Mrs Glegg, by way of winding up the subject, " as
I shall go to the mill again before Bessy comes to
see me, or as I shall go and fall down o' my knees

240 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

to Mr Tulliver and ask his pardon for showing
him favours ; but I shall bear no malice, and when
Mr Tulliver speaks civil to me, I'll speak civil to
him. Nobody has any call to tell me what's be-
coming."

Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Tullivers,
it was natural that aunt Pullet should relax a little
in her anxiety for them, and recur to the annoyance
she had suffered yesterday from the offspring of
that apparently ill-fated house. Mrs Glegg heard a
circumstantial narrative, to which Mr Pullet's re-
markable memory furnished some items ; and while
aunt Pullet pitied poor Bessy's bad-luck with her
children, and expressed a half- formed project of
papng for Maggie's being sent to a distant board-
ing-school, which would not prevent her being so
brown, but might tend to subdue some other vices
in her, aunt Glegg blamed Bessy for her weakness,
and appealed to all witnesses who should be living
when the Tulliver children had turned out ill, that
she, Mrs Glegg, had always said how it would be
from the very first, observing that it was wonderful
to herself how all her words came true.

"Then I may call and tell Bessy you'll bear no
malice, and everything be as it was before ? '' Mrs
Pullet said, just before parting.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 241

" Yes, you may, Sophy," said Mrs Glegg ; " you
may tell Mr Tulliver, and Bessy too, as I'm not
going to behave ill because folks behave ill to me :
I know it's my place, as the eldest, to set an ex-
ample in every respect, and I do it. Nobody can
say different of me, if they'll keep to the trutL'*

Mrs Glegg being in this state of satisfaction in
her own lofty magnanimity, I leave you to judge
what effect was produced on her by the reception of
a short letter from Mr Tulliver, that very evening,
after Mrs Pullet's departure, informing her that she
needn't trouble her mind about her five hundred
pounds, for it should be paid back to her in the
course of the next month at farthest, together with
the interest due thereon until the time of payment.
And furthermore, that Mr Tulliver had no wish to
behave uncivilly to Mrs Glegg, and she was welcome
to his house whenever she liked to come, but he
desiiped no favours from her, either for himself or
his children.

It was poor Mrs Tulliver who had hastened this
catastrophe, entirely through that irrepressible hope-
fulness of hers which led her to expect that similar
causes may at any time produce different results.
It had very often occurred in her experience that
!Mr Tulliver had done something because other

VOL. L Q

242 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

people had said he was not able to do it, or had
pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any-
other way piqued his pride; stiQ, she thought to-
day, if she told him when he came in to tea that
sister Pullet was gone to try and make everything
up with sister Glegg, so that he needn't think
about paying in the money, it would give a cheerful
effect to the meaL Mr Tulliver had never slackened
in his resolve to raise the money, but now he at
once determined to write a letter to Mrs Glegg
which should cut off all possibility of mistake. IVIrs
Pullet gone to beg and pray for him, indeed ! Mr
Tulliver did not willingly write a letter, and found
the relation between spoken and written language,
briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling
things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like
all fervid writing, the task was done in less time
than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs
Glegg's — why, she belonged, like himself, to a gener-
ation with whom spelling was a matter of private
judgment.

Mrs Glegg did not alter her will in consequence
of this letter, and cut off the Tulliver children
from their sixth and seventh share in her thousand
pounds ; for she had her principles. No one must
be able to say of her when she was dead that she

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 243

had not divided her money with perfect fairness
among her own kin : in the matter of wills, personal
qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental
fact of blood ; and to be determined in the distribu-
tion of your property by caprice, and not make
your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kin-
ship, was a prospective disgrace that would have
embittered her life. This had always been a prin-
ciple in the Dodson family ; it was one form of that
sense of honour and rectitude which was a proud
tradition in such families — a tradition which has
been the salt of our provincial society.

But though the letter could not shake Mrs Glegg's
principles, it made the family breach much more
difficult to mend ; and as to the effect it produced
on Mrs Glegg's opinion of Mr Tulliver — she begged
to be understood from that time forth that she had
nothing whatever to say about him: his state of
mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to con-
template it for a moment. It was not until the
evening before Tom went to school, at the begin-
ning of August, that Mrs Glegg paid a visit to her
sister Tulliver, sitting in her gig all the while, and
showing her displeasure by markedly abstaining
from all advice and criticism, for, as she observed
to her sister Deane, " Bessy must bear the conse-

244 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

quences o' having such a husband, though I'm sorry
for her/' and Mrs Deane agreed that Bessy was
pitiable.

That evening Tom observed to Maggie, " 0 my !
Maggie, aunt Glegg's beginning to come again ; I'm
glad I'm going to school. You'll catch it all now ! "

Maggie was already so full of sorrow at the
thought of Tom's going away from her, that this
playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and
she cried herself to sleep that night.

Mr Tulliver's prompt procedure entailed on him
further promptitude in finding the convenient per-
son who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds
on bond. " It must be no client of Wakem's," he
said to himself ; and yet at the end of a fortnight
it turned out to the contrary ; not because Mr Tulli-
ver's will was feeble, but because external fact was
stronger. Wakem's client was the only convenient
person to be found. Mr Tulliver had a destiny as
well as CEdipus, and in this case he might plead, like
CEdipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather
than committed by him.

BOOK SECOND

SCHOOL-TIME

CHAPTER I.

TOM'S " FIRST HALF."

Tom Tulliver's sufferings during the first quarter
he was at King's Lorton, under the distinguished
care of the Rev. Walter Stelling, were rather severe.
At Mr Jacobs' academy, life had not presented
itself to him as a difficult problem : there were
plenty of fellows to play with, and Tom being good
at all active games — fighting especially — had that
precedence among them which appeared to him
inseparable from the personality of Tom Tulliver.
Mr Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old Goggles,
from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no
painful awe ; and if it was the property of snuffy
old hypocrites like him to write like copperplate
and surround their signatures with arabesques, to
spell without forethought, and to spout " My name
is Norval" without bungling, Tom, for his part, was
rather glad he was not in danger of those mean

248 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

accomplisliments. He was not going to be a snufiy
schoolmaster — he ; but a substantial man, like his
father, who used to go hunting when he was younger,
and rode a capital black mare — as pretty a bit of
horse-flesh as ever you saw : Tom had heard what
her points were a hundred times. He meant to go
hunting too, and to be generally respected. When
people were grown up, he considered, nobody in-
quired about their writing and spelling : when he
was a man, he should be master of everything, and
do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for
him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-
time was to be prolonged, and that he was not to
be brought up to his father's business, which he had
always thought extremely pleasant, for it was no-
thing but riding about, giving orders, and going to
market ; and he thought that a clerg5nnan would
give him a great many Scripture lessons, and pro-
bably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a
Sunday as well as the Collect. But in the absence
of specific information, it was impossible for him
to imagine that school and a schoolmaster would be
something entirely difierent from the academy of
Mr Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in case
of his finding genial companions, he had taken care
to carry with him a small box of percussion-caps ;

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 249

not that there was anything particular to be done
with them, but they would serve to impress strange
boys with a sense of his familiarity with guns.
Thus poor Tom, though he saw very clearly through
Maggie's illusions, was not without illusions of his
own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his
enlarged experience at King's Lorton.

He had not been there a fortnight before it was
evident to him that life, complicated not only with
the Latin grammar but with a new standard of
English pronunciation, was a very difficult business,
made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bash-
fulness. Tom, as you have observed, was never an
exception among boys for ease of address ; but the
difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to
Mr or Mrs Stelling was so great, that he even
dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have
more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had
almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that
he would throw them into a neighbouring pond;
for not only was he the solitary pupil, but he began
even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a
general sense that his theory of life was undermined.
For Mr Stelling thought nothing of guns, or horses
either, apparently; and yet it was impossible for
Tom to despise Mr Stelling as he had despised Old

250 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Goggles. If there were anything that was not
thoroughly genuine about Mr Stelling, it lay quite
beyond Tom's power to detect it : it is only by a
wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown
man can distinguish well-rolled barrels from more
supernal thunder.

Mr Stelling was a well-sized, broad-chested man,
not yet thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and
large lightish-grey eyes, which were always very
wide open ; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air
of defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness.
He had entered on his career with great vigour, and
intended to make a considerable impression on his
fellow-men. The Eev. Walter Stelling was not a
man who would remain among the " inferior clergy"
all his life. He had a true British determination to
push his way in the world. As a schoolmaster, in
the first place ; for there were capital masterships of
grammar-schools to be had, and Mr Stelling meant
to have one of them. But as a preacher also, for he
meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as
to have his congregation swelled by admirers from
neighbouring parishes, and to produce a great sen-
sation whenever he took occasional duty for a brother
clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching
he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 251

held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes
like King's Lorton. Some passages of Massillon
and Bourdaloue, which he knew by heart, were really
very effective when rolled out in Mr Stelliug's deep-
est tones ; but as comparatively feeble appeals of his
own were delivered in the same loud and impressive
manner, they were often thought quite as striking
by his hearers. Mr Stelling's doctrine was of no
particular school ; if anything, it had a tinge of
evangelicalism, for that was "the telling thing'*
just then in the diocese to which King's Lorton
belonged. In short, Mr Stelling was a man who
meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by
merit, clearly, since he had no interest beyond
what might be promised by a problematic relation-
ship to a gTcat lawyer who had not yet become Lord
Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous
intentions naturally gets a little into debt at start-
ing ; it is not to be expected that he will live in the
meagre style of a man who means to be a poor curate
all his life, and if the few hundreds Mr Timpson
advanced towards his daughter's fortune did not
suffice for the purchase of handsome furniture, to-
gether with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the
laying-out of a superior flower-garden, it followed
in the most rigorous manner, either that these things

252 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

must be procured by some other means, or else that
the Kev. Mr Stelling must go without them — ^which
last alternative would be an absurd procrastination
of the fruits of success, where success was certain.
Mr Stelling was so broad-chested and resolute that
he felt equal to anything ; he would become cele-
brated by shaking the consciences of his hearers, and
he would by-and-by edit a Greek play, and invent
several new readings. He had not yet selected the
play, for having been married little more than two
years, his leisure time had been much occupied with
attentions to Mrs Stelling ; but he had told that
fine woman what he meant to do some day, and she
felt great confidence in her husband, as a man who
understood everything of that sort.

But the immediate step to future success was to
bring on Tom TuUiver during this first half-year;
for, by a singular coincidence, there had been some
negotiation concerning another pupil from the same
neighbourhood, and it might further a decision in
Mr Stelling's favour, if it were understood that
young Tulliver, who, Mr Stelling observed in con-
jugal privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made
prodigious progress in a short time. It was on this
ground that he was severe with Tom about his
lessons : he was clearly a boy whose powers would

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 253

never be developed through the medium of the
Latin grammar, without the application of some
sternness. Not that Mr Stelling was a harsh-tem-
pered or unkind man — quite the contrary : he was
jocose with Tom at table, and corrected his pro-
vincialisms and his deportment in the most playful
manner ; but poor Tom was only the more cowed
and confused by this double novelty, for he had never
been used to jokes at all like Mr Stelling's ; and for
the first time in his life he had a painful sense that
he was all wrong somehow. When Mr Stelling said,
as the roast-beef was being uncovered, " Now, Tul-
liver ! which would you rather decline, roast-beef or
the Latin for it ? " — Tom, to whom in his coolest
moments a pun would have been a hard nut, was
thrown into a state of embarrassed alarm that made
everything dim to him except the feeling that he
would rather not have anything to do with Latin :
of course he answered, " Roast-beef," whereupon
there followed much laughter and some practical
joking with the plates, from which Tom gathered
that he had in some mysterious way refused beef,
and, in fact, made himself appear " a silly.'* If he
could have seen a fellow-pupil undergo these pain-
ful operations and survive them in good spirits, he
might sooner have taken them as a matter of course.

254 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

But there are two expensive forms of education,
either of which a parent may procure for his son by-
sending him as solitary pupil to a clergyman : one
is, the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's un-
divided neglect ; the other is, the endurance of the
reverend gentleman's undivided attention. It was
the latter privilege for which Mr TuUiver paid a high
price in Tom's initiatory months at King's Lorton.
That respectable miller and maltster had left Tom
behind, and driven homeward in a state of great
mental satisfaction. He considered that it was a
happy moment for him when he had thought of ask-
ing Riley's advice about a tutor for Tom. Mr Stell-
ing's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such
an off-hand, matter-of-fact way, — answering every
difficult slow remark of Mr TulKver's with, " I see,
my good sir, I see ; " " To be sure, to be sure ; ''
" You want your son to be a man who will make his
way in the world," — that Mr Tulliver was delighted
to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so
applicable to the everyday affairs of this life. Except
Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the last
sessions, Mr Tulliver thought the Eev. Mr Stelling
was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with —
not unlike Wylde, in fact : he had the same way of
sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waist-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 255

coat. Mr Tulliver was not by any means an ex-
ception in mistaking brazenness for shrewdness:
most laymen thought Stelling shrewd, and a man
of remarkable powers generally ; it was chiefly by
his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a
dull fellow. But he told Mr Tulliver several stories
about "swing" and incendiarism, and asked his
advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular
and judicious a manner, with so much polished
glibness of tongue, that the miller thought, here was
the very thing he wanted for Tom. He had no
doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every
branch of information, and knew exactly what Tom
must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers
— which poor Mr Tulliver himself did not know, and
so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this
wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh
at him, for I have known much more highly-
instructed persons than he make inferences quite
as wide, and not at all wiser.

As for Mrs Tulliver — finding that Mrs Stelling's
views as to the airing of linen and the frequent
recurrence of hunger in a growing boy, entirely
coincided with her own ; moreover, that Mrs Stell-
ing, though so young a woman, and only anticipat-
ing her second confinement, had gone through very

256 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

nearly tlie same experience as herself with regard
to the behaviour and fundamental character of the
monthly nurse, she expressed great contentment to
her husband, when they drove away, at leaving Tom
with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed
quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as
prettily as could be.

" They must be very well off, though," said Mrs
Tulliver, " for everything's as nice as can be all over
the house, and that watered-silk she had on cost a
pretty penny. Sister Pullet has got one like it."

" Ah,'' said Mr Tulliver, " he's got some income
besides the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father
allows 'em something. There's Tom 'ull be another
hundred to him, and not much trouble either, by
his own account : he says teaching comes natural to
him. That's wonderful, now," added Mr Tulliver,
turning his head on one side, and giving his horse
a meditative tickling on the flank.

Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally
to ]\Ir Stelling, that he set about it with that
uniformity of method and independence of circum-
stances, which distinguish the actions of animals
understood to be under the immediate teaching of
nature. Mr Broderip's amiable beaver, as that
charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as ear-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 257

nestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three
pair of stairs in London, as if he had been laying
his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada.
It was "Binny's" function to build: the absence
of water or of possible progeny was an accident for
which he was not accountable. With the same
unerring instinct Mr Stelling set to work at his
natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar and
Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver. This, he
considered, was the only basis of solid instruction :
all other means of education were mere charlatan-
ism, and could produce nothing better than smat-
terers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might
observe the display of various or special knowledge
made by irregularly educated people with a pitying
smile : all that sort of thing was very tvell, but it
was impossible these people could form sound
opinions. In holding this conviction Mr Stelling
was not biassed, as some tutors have been, by the
excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholar-
ship ; and as to his views about Euclid, no opinion
could have been freer from personal partiality. Mr
Stelling was very far from being led astray by
enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual : on the
other hand, he had no secret belief that everything
was humbug. He thought religion was a very
VOL. L B

258 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority,
and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and
Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protest-
antism, and faith in the unseen a great support to
afflicted minds : he believed in all these things, as a
Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the
scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to
artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr Stelling
believed in his method of education: he had no
doubt that he was doing the very best thing for Mr
Tulliver's boy. Of course, when the miller talked of
"mapping" and "summing'' in a vague and diffident
manner, Mr Stelling had set his mind at rest by an
assurance that he understood what was wanted ;
for how was it possible the good man could form
any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr
Stelling's duty was to teach the lad in the only
right way — indeed, he knew no other : he had not
wasted his time in the acquirement of anything
abnormal.

He very soon set down poor Tom as a thoroughly
stupid lad ; for though by hard labour he could get
particular declensions into his brain, anything so
abstract as the relation between cases and termina-
tions could by no means get such a lodgment there
as to enable him to recognise a chance genitive or

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 259

dative. This struck Mr Stalling as something more
than natural stupidity : he suspected obstinacy, or,
at any rate, indifference ; and lectured Tom severely
on his want of thorough application. " You feel no
interest in what you're doing, sir," Mr Stelling
would say, and the reproach was painfully tnie.
Tom had never found any difficulty in discerning a
pointer from a setter, when once he had been told
the distinction, and his perceptive powers were not
at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong
as those of the Rev. Mr Stelling ; for Tom could
predict with accuracy what number of horses were
cantering behind him, he could throw a stone right
into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to
a fraction how many lengths of his stick it would
take to reach across the playground, and could draw
almost perfect squares on his slate without any
measurement. But Mr Stelling took no note of
these things : he only observed that Tom's faculties
failed him before the abstractions hideously sym-
bolised to him in the pages of the Eton Grammar,
and that he was in a state bordering on idiocy with
regard to the demonstration that two given triangles
must be equal — though he could discern with great
promptitude and certainty the fact that they were
equal Whence Mr Stelling concluded that Tom's

260 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

brain, being peculiarly impervious to etymology and
demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being
ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements :
it was his favourite metaphor, that the classics
and geometry constituted that culture of the mind
which prepared it for the reception of any subse-
quent crop. I say nothing against Mr Stelling's
theory : if we are to have one regimen for all
minds, his seems to me as good as any other. I
only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Tom
Tulliver as if he had been plied with cheese in order
to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him
from digesting it. It is astonishing what a dif-
ferent result one gets by changing the metaphor !
Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and
one's ingenious conception of the classics and
geometry as ploughs and harrows seems to settle
nothing. But then it is open to some one else to
follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet
of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's
knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite
irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to
call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would
hardly lead one far in training that useful beast.
P Aristotle ! if you had had the advantage of being
"the freshest modern" instead of the greatest

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 261

ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of
metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence,
with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows
itself in speech without metaphor, — that we can so
seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it
is something else ?

TomTulliver, being abundant in no form of speech,
did not use any metaphor to declare his views as to
the nature of Latin : he never called it an instru-
ment of torture ; and it was not until he had got on
some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus,
that he was advanced enough to call it a " bore "
and " beastly stuff." At present, in relation to this
demand that he should learn Latin declensions and
conjugations, Tom was in a state of as blank unim-
aginativeness concerning the cause and tendency
of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent
shrewmouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash
tree in order to cure lameness in cattle. It is
doubtless almost incredible to instructed minds of
the present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging
strictly to " the masses," who are now understood to
have the monopoly of mental darkness, should have
had no distinct idea how there came to be such a
thing as Latin on this earth : yet so it was with Tom.
It would have taken a long while to make conceiv-

26.2 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

able to Mm that there ever existed a people who
bought and sold sheep and oxen, and transacted the
everyday affairs of life, through the medium of this
language, and still longer to make him understand
why he should be called upon to learn it, when its
connection with those affairs had become entirely
latent. So far as Tom had gained any acquaintance
with the Eomans at Mr Jacobs' academy, his know-
ledge was strictly correct, but it went no farther
than the fact that they were " in the New Testa-
ment;'' and Mr Stelling was not the man to en-
feeble and emasculate his pupil's mind by simpli-
fying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of
etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous
information such as is given to girls.

Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment
Tom became more like a girl than he had ever been
in his life before. He had a large share of pride,
which had hitherto found itself very comfortable
in the world, despising Old Goggles, and repos-
ing in the sense of unquestioned rights ; but now
this same pride met with nothing but bruises and
crushings. Tom was too clear-sighted not to be
aware that Mr Stelling's standard of things was
quite different, was certainly something higher in
the eyes of the world, than that of the people he

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 263

had been living amongst, and that, brought in con-
tact with it, he, Tom Tulliver, appeared uncouth and
stupid : he was by no means indifferent to this, and
his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite
nullified his boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him
something of the girl's susceptibility. He was of a
very firm, not to say obstinate, disposition, but there
was no brute-like rebellion and recklessness in his
nature : the human sensibilities predominated, and
if it had occurred to him that he could enable him-
self to show some quickness at his lessons, and so
acquire Mr Stelling's approbation, by standing on one
leg for an inconvenient length of time, or rapping
his head moderately against the wall, or any volun-
tary action of that sort, he would certainly have
tried it. But no — Tom had never heard that these
measures would brighten the understanding, or
strengthen the verbal memory ; and he was not given
to hypothesis and experiment It did occur to him
that he could perhaps get some help bj praying for
it ; but as the prayers he said every evening were
forms learned by heart, he rather shrank from the
novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore
passage on a topic of petition for which he was not
aware of any precedent. But one day when he had
broken down, for the fifth time in the supines of the

264 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

third conjugation, and Mr Stelling, convinced that
this must be carelessness, since it transcended the
bounds of possible stupidity, had lectured him very
seriously, pointing out that if he failed to seize the
present golden opportunity of learning supines, he
would have to regret it when he became a man, —
Tom, more miserable than usual, determined to try
his sole resource ; and that evening, after his usual
form of prayer for his parents and " little sister ''
(he had begun to pray for Maggie when she was a
baby), and that he might be able always to keep
God's commandments, he added, in the same low
whisper, " and please to make me always remember
my Latin/' He paused a little to consider how he
should pray about Euclid — whether he should ask to
see what it meant, or whether there was any other
mental state which would be more applicable to
the case. But at last he added — " And make Mr
Stelling say I shan't do Euclid any more. Amen.''
The fact that he got through his supines without
mistake the next day, encouraged him to persevere
in this appendix to his prayers, and neutralised any
scepticism that might have arisen from Mr Stell-
ing's continued demand for Euclid. But his faith
broke down under the apparent absence of all help
when he got into the irregular verbs. It seemed

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 265

clear that Tom's despair under the caprices of the
present tense did not constitute a nodus worthy of
interference, and since this was the climax of his
difficulties, where was the use of praying for help
any longer ? He made up his mind to this conclu-
sion in one of his dull, lonely evenings, which he
spent in the study, preparing his lessons for the
morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the
page — though he hated crying, and was ashamed
of it : he couldn't help thinking with some affection
even of Spouncer, whom he used to fight and quarrel
with ; he would have felt at home with Spouncer,
and in a condition of superiority. And then the
mill, and the river, and Yap pricking up his ears,
ready to obey the least sign when Tom said "Hoigh !"
would all come before him in a sort of calenture,
when his fingers played absently in his pocket with
his great knife and his coil of whip-cord, and other
relics of the past. Tom, as I said, had never been so
much like a girl in his life before, and at that epoch
of irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed
by a new means of mental development, which had
been thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs
Stelling had lately had her second baby, and as
nothing could be more salutary for a boy than to
feel himself useful, Mrs Stelling considered she was

266 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

doing Tom a service by setting him to watch the
little cherub Laura while the nurse was occupied with
the sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment
for Tom to take little Laura out in the sunniest
hour of the autumn day — ^it would help to make
him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a home for him,
and that he was one of the family. The little cherub
Laura, not being an accomplished walker at present,
had a ribbon fastened round her waist, by which
Tom held her as if she had been a little dog during
the minutes in which she chose to walk ; but as these
were rare, he was for the most part carrying this
fine child round and round the garden, within sight
of Mrs Stelling's window — according to orders. If
any one considers this unfair and even oppressive
towards Tom, I beg him to consider that there are
feminine virtues which are with difiiculty combined,
even if they are not incompatible. When the
wife of a poor curate contrives, under all her dis-
advantages, to dress extremely well, and to have a
style of coiffure which requires that her nurse shall
occasionally officiate as lady's-maid, — when, moreover,
her dinner-parties and her drawing-room show that
effort at elegance and completeness of appointment
to which ordinary women might imagine a large in-
come necessary, it would be unreasonable to expect

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 267

of her that she should employ a second nurse, or even
act as a nurse herself. Mr Stelling knew better :
he saw that his wife did wonders already, and was
proud of her : it was certainly not the best thing in
the world for young Tulliver's gait to carry a heavy
child, but he had plenty of exercise in long walks
with himself, and next half-year Mr Stelling would
see about having a drilling-master. Among the
many means whereby Mr Stelling intended to be
more fortunate than the bulk of his fellow-men, he
had entirely given up that of having his own way
in his own house. What then? he had married
" as kind a little soul as ever breathed," according
to Mr Eiley, who had been acquainted with Mrs
Stelling's blond ringlets and smiling demeanour
throughout her maiden life, and on the strength of
that knowledge would have been ready any day to
pronounce that whatever domestic differences might
arise in her married life must be entirely Mr Stell-
ing's fault.

If Tom had had a worse disposition, he would
certainly have hated the little cherub Laura, but he
was too kind-hearted a lad for that — there was too
much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness,
and to protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he
hated Mrs Stelling, and contracted a lasting dislike

268 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

to pale blond ringlets and broad plaits, as directly as-
sociated with liaugbtiness of manner and a frequent
reference to other people's " duty." But he couldn't
help playing with little Laura, and liking to amuse
her : he even sacrificed his percussion-caps for her
sake, in despair of their ever serving a greater pur-
pose— thinking the small flash and bang would de-
light her, and thereby drawing down on himself a
rebuke from Mrs Stelling for teaching her child to
play with fire. Laura was a sort of playfellow —
and 0 how Tom longed for playfellows ! In his
secret heart he yearned to have Maggie with him,
and was almost ready to doat on her exasperating
acts of forgetfulness ; though, when he was at home,
he always represented it as a great favour on his
part to let Maggie trot by his side on his pleasure
excursions.

And before this dreary half-year was ended,
Maggie actually came. Mrs Stelling had given a
general invitation for the little girl to come and
stay with her brother ; so when Mr TuUiver drove
over to King's Lorton late in October, Maggie came
too, with the sense that she was taking a great
journey, and beginning to see the world. It was
Mr Tulliver's first visit to see Tom, for the lad must
learn not to think too much about home.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 269

"Well, my lad," he said to Tom, when Mr Stell-
ing had left the room to announce the arrival to his
wife, and Maggie had begun to kiss Tom freely,
" you look rarely ! School agrees with you."

Tom wished he had looked rather ill.

"I don't think I am well, father," said Tom ; " I
wish you'd ask Mr Stelling not to let me do Euclid
— it brings on the toothache, I think."

(The toothache was the only malady to which Tom
had ever been subject.)

"Euclid, my lad— why, what's that?" said Mr
TuUiver.

" 0, I don't know : it's definitions, and axioms,
and triangles, and things. It's a book I've got to
learn in — there's no sense in it."

" Go, go ! " said Mr Tulliver, reprovingly, " you
mustn't say so. You must learn what your master
tells you. He knows what it's right for you to learn."

"Til help you now, Tom," said Maggie, with a little
air of patronising consolation. " I'm come to stay
ever so long, if Mrs SteUing asks me. I've brought
my box and my pinafores, haven't I, father ? "

" Tou help me, you silly little thing ! " said Tom,
in such high spirits at this announcement that he
quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Maggie by
showing her a page of Euclid. " I should like to

270 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

see you doing one of my lessons ! Why, I learn
Latin too ! Girls never learn such things. They're
too'silly."

" I know what Latin is very well/' said Maggie,
confidently. " Latin's a language. There are Latin
words in the Dictionary. There's bonus, a gift."

" Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Maggie ! "
said Tom, secretly astonished. " You think you're
very wise I But ' bonus ' mean* * good,' as it hap-
pens— bonus, bona,' bonum,"

"Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean
' gift,' " said Maggie, stoutly. " It may mean several
things — almost every word does. There's "lawn," —
it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket-
handkerchiefs are made of."

"Well done, little 'un," said Mr TuUiver, laugh-
ing, while Tom felt rather disgusted with Maggie's
knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at
the thought that she was going to stay with him.
Her conceit would soon be overawed by the actual
inspection of his books.

Mrs Stelling, in her pressing invitation, did not
mention a longer time than a week for Maggie's
stay ; but Mr Stelling, who took her between his
knees, and asked her where she stole her dark eyes
from, insisted that she must stay a fortnight.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 271

Maggie thought Mr Stelling was a charming man,
and Mr Tulliver was quite proud to leave his little
wench where she would have an opportunity of
showing her cleverness to appreciating strangers.
So it was agreed that she should not be fetched
home till the end of the fortnight.

" Now, then, come with me into the study, Mag-
gie,'' said Tom, as their father drove away. " What
do you shake and toss your head now for, you sUly ?"
he continued ; for though her hair was now under
a new dispensation, and was brushed smoothly be-
hind her ears, she seemed still in imagination to be
tossing it out of her eyes. " It makes you look as
if you were crazy."

"0, I can't help it," said Maggie, impatiently.
" Don't tease me, Tom. 0, what books ! " she ex-
claimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study.
"How I should like to have as many books as
that!"

" Why, you couldn't read one of 'em, said Tom,"
triumphantly. " They're all Latin."

" No, they aren't," said Maggie. " I can read the
back of this .... History of the Decline and Fall
of the Koman Empire."

" Well, what does that mean ? You don't know,"
said Tom, wagging his head.

272 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" But I could soon find out," said Maggie, scorn-
fuUy.

"Why, how?"

"I should look inside, and see what it was
about/'

" You'd better not, Miss Maggie," said Tom, see-
ing her hand on the volume. " Mr Stelling lets no-
body touch his books without leave, and / shall
catch it, if you take it out/'

" 0, very well ! Let me see all your books, then,''
said Maggie, turning to throw her arms round Tom's
neck, and rub his cheek with her small round nose.

Tom, in the gladness of his heart at having dear
old Maggie to dispute with and crow over again,
seized her round the waist, and began to jump with
her round the large library table. Away they
jumped with more and more vigour, till Maggie's
hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled about
like an animated mop. But the revolutions round
the table became more and more irregular in their
sweep, till at last reaching Mr Stelling's reading-
stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy
lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-
floor, and the study was a one-storied wing to the
house, so that the downfall made no alarming re-
sonance, though Tom stood dizzy and aghast for a

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 273

few minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr or Mrs
Stelling.

" 0, I say, Maggie," said Tom at last, lifting up
the stand, " we must keep quiet here, you know. If
we break anything, Mrs Stelling 11 make us cry
peccavL''

" What's that ? " said Maggie.

" 0, it's the Latin for a good scolding," said Tom,
not without some pride in his knowledge.

" Is she a cross woman ? " said Maggie.

" I believe you ! " said Tom, with an emphatic
nod.

" I think all women are crosser than men," said
Maggie. " Aunt Glegg 's a great deal crosser than
Uncle Glegg, and mother scolds me more than
father does."

" Well, you II be a woman some day," said Tom,
" so you needn't talk."

" But I shall be a clever woman," said Maggie,
with a toss.

"0, I daresay, and a nasty conceited thing.
Everybody 'U hate you."

" But you oughtn't to hate me, Tom : it'll be
very wicked of you, for I shaU be your sister."

" Yes, but if you're a nasty disagreeable thing, I
shall hate you."

VOL. I. S

274 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" 0 but, Tom, you won't ! I shan't be disagreeable.
I sliall be very good to you — and I shall be good to
everybody. You won't hate me really, will you,
Tom?"

" 0, bother ! never mind ! Come, it's time for me
to learn my lessons. See here ! what IVe got to
do," said Tom, drawing Maggie towards him and
showing her his theorem, while she pushed her hair
behind her ears, and prepared herself to prove her
capability of helping him in Euclid. She began to
read with fuU confidence in her own powers, but
presently, becoming quite bewildered, her face flushed
with irritation. It was unavoidable — she must con-
fess her incompetency, and she was not fond of
humiliation.

" It's nonsense ! " she said, " and very ugly stuff
— nobody need want to make it out."

" Ah, there now, Miss Maggie ! " said Tom, draw-
ing the book away, and wagging his head at her,
" you see you're not so clever as you thought you
were."

" 0," said Maggie, pouting, " I daresay I could
make it out, if I'd learned what goes before, as you
have."

" But that's what you just couldn't. Miss Wis-
dom," said Tom. " For it's all the harder when you

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 275

know what goes before : for then youVe got to say
what definition 3. is, and what axiom V. is. But
get along with you now : I must go on with this.
Here's the Latin Grammar. See what you can make
of that.''

Maggie found the Latin Grammar quite sooth-
ing after her mathematical mortification ; for
she delighted in new words, and quickly found
that there was an English Key at the end, which
would make her very wise about Latin, at slight
expensa She presently made up her mind to skip
the rules in the Syntax — the examples became so
absorbing. These mysterious sentences, snatched
fi'om an unknown context, — ^like strange horns of
beasts, and leaves of unknown plants, brought from
some far-off region, — ^gave boundless scope to her
imagination, and were all the more fascinating
because they were in a peculiar tongue of their
own, which she could learn to interpret. It
was really very interesting — the Latin Grammar
that Tom had said no girls could learn: and she
was proud because she found it interesting. The
most fragmentary examples were her favourites.
Mors omnibus est communis would have been
jejime, only she liked to know the Latin ; but the
fortunate gentleman whom every one congratulated

276 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

because lie had a son " endowed with such a disposi-
tion'' afforded her a great deal of pleasant conjec-
ture, and she was quite lost in the "thick grove
penetrable by no star/' witen Tom called out,

"Now, then, Magsie, give us the Grammar !"

"0 Tom, it's such a pretty book !" she said, as
she jumped out of the large arm-chair to give it
him; "it's much prettier than the Dictionary. I
could learn Latin very soon. I don't think it's at
all hard."

" 0, I know what you've been doing," said Tom ;
" you've been reading the English at the end. Any
donkey can do that."

Tom seized the book and opened it with a deter-
mined and business-like air, as much as to say that
he had a lesson to learn which no donkeys would
find themselves equal to. Maggie, rather piqued,
turned to the bookcases to amuse herself with
puzzling out the titles.

Presently Tom called to her: "Here, Magsie,
come and hear if I can say this. Stand at that end
of the table, where Mr Stelling sits when he hears
me."

Maggie obeyed and took the open book.

"Where do you begin, Tom?"

" 0, I begin at ' Appellativa arhorum/ because

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 277

I say all over again what I've been learning this
week."

Tom sailed along pretty well for three lines ;
and Maggie was beginning to forget her office of
prompter, in speculating as to what mas could
mean, which came twice over, when he stuck fast
at Sunt etiam volucrum.

" Don't tell me, Maggie ; Sunt etiam volu-
crum. . . . Sunt etiam volucrum , . . ut ostrea,
cetus . . /'

" No," said Maggie, opening her mouth and shak-
ing her head.

" Sunt etiam volucrtcm," said Tom, very slowly,
as if the next words might be expected to come
sooner when he gave them this strong hint that
they were waited for.

*' C, e, u," said Maggie, getting impatient.

" 0, 1 know — hold your tongue," said Tom. " Ceu
passer, hirundo; Ferarum .... ferarum . . ."
Tom took his pencil and made several hard dots
with it on his book-cover .... "ferarum . . . ."

" 0 dear, 0 dear, Tom," said Maggie, "what a time
you are ! TJt . . . ."

" m, ostrea . . . !*

" No, no," said Maggie, " ut, tigris . . , J"

" 0 yes, now I can do,'' said Tom ; " it was tigris,

278 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

vulpes, I'd forgotten : ut tigris, vulpes; et Pis-
cium."

With some further stammering and repetition,
Tom got through the next few lines.

" Now, then," he said, " the next is what I've just
learnt for to-morrow. Give me hold of the book a
minute/'

After some whispered gabbling, assisted by the
beating of his fist on the table, Tom returned the
book.

** Mascula nomina in a," he began.

"No, Tom,'' said Maggie, "that doesn't come
next. It's Nomen non cresJcens genittivo . . . ."

" Creshens genittivo" exclaimed Tom, with a
derisive laugh, for Tom had learned this omitted
passage for his yesterday's lesson, and a young
gentleman does not require an intimate or
extensive acquaintance with Latin before he
can feel the pitiable absurdity of a false quantity.
" Creskens genittivo! What a little silly you are,
Maggie !"

"Well, you needn't laugh, Tom, for you didn't
remember it at alL I'm sure it's spelt so ; how was
I to know?"

" Phee-e-e-h 1 I told you girls couldn't learn Latin.
It's Nomen non crescens genitivo"

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 279

''Very well, then," said Maggie, pouting. "I
can say that as well as you can. And you don't
mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as
long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you
make the longest stops where there ought to be no
stop at alL"

" 0, well, don't chatter. Let me go on."

They were presently fetched to spend the rest of
the evening in the drawing-room, and Maggie be-
came so animated with Mr Stelling, who, she felt
sure, admired her cleverness, that Tom was rather
amazed and alarmed at her audacity. But she was
suddenly subdued by Mr Stelling's alluding to a
little girl of whom he had heard that she once ran
away to the gypsies.

" What a very odd little girl that must be ! " said
Mrs Stelling, meaning to be playful — but a playful-
ness that turned on her supposed oddity was not at
all to Maggie's taste. She feared Mr Stelling, after
all, did not think much of her, and went to bed in
rather low spirits. Mrs Stelling, she felt, looked at
her as if she thought her hair was very ugly because
it hung down straight behind.

Nevertheless it was a very happy fortnight to
Maggie, this visit to Tom. She was allowed to be
in the study while he had hLs lessons, and in her

280 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

various readings got very deep into the examples
in the Latin Grammar. The astronomer who hated
women generally, caused her so much puzzling
speculation that she one day asked Mr Stelling if
all astronomers hated women, or whether it was only
this particular astronomer. But, forestalling his
answer, she said,

" I suppose it's all astronomers : because, you
know, they live up in high towers, and if the women
came there, they might talk and hinder them from
looking at the stars.'^

Mr Stelling liked her prattle immensely, and they
were on the best terms. She told Tom she should
like to go to school to Mr Stelling, as he did, and
learn just the same things. She knew she could do
Euclid, for she had looked into it again, and she
saw what ABC meant : they were the names of
the lines.

" I'm sure you couldn't do it, now," said Tom ;
" and I'll just ask Mr Stelling if you could.''

" I don t mind,'' said the little conceited minx.
" 111 ask him myself"

"Mr Stelling," she said, that same evening when
they were in the drawing-room, "couldn't I do
Euclid, and all Tom's lessons, if you were to teach
. me instead of him ? "

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 281

"No; you couldn't/' said Tom, indignantly.
" Girls can't do Euclid : can they, sir ? "

" They can pick up a little of everything, I dare-
say," said Mr Stelling. " They've a great deal of
superficial cleverness ; but they couldn't go far into
anything. They're quick and shallow. "

Tom, delighted with this verdict, telegraphed his
triumph by wagging his head at Maggie behind Mr
Stelling's chair. As for Maggie, she had hardly
ever been so mortified. She had been so proud to
be called " quick" all her little life, and now it ap-
peared that this quickness was the brand of inferi-
ority. It would have been better to be slow, like
Tom.

" Ha, ha ! Miss Maggie ! " said Tom, when they
were alone, " you see it's not such a fine thing to be
quick. You'll never go far into anything, you
know."

And Maggie was so oppressed by this dreadful
destiny that she had no spirit for a retort.

But when this small apparatus of shallow quick-
ness was fetched away in the gig by Luke, and the
study was once more quite lonely for Tom, he missed
her grievously. He had really been brighter, and
had got through his lessons better, since she had
been there ; and she had asked Mr Stelling so many

282 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

qnestions about the Eoman empire, and whether
there really ever was a man who said, in Latin, " I
would not buy it for a farthing or a rotten nut," or
whether that had only been turned into Latin, that
Tom had actually come to a dim understanding of
the fact that there had once been people upon the
earth who were so fortunate as to know Latin with-
out learning it through the medium of the Eton
Grammar. This luminous idea was a great addition
to his historical acquirements during this half-year,
which were otherwise confined to an epitomised
history of the Jews.

But the dreary half-year did come to an end.
How glad Tom was to see the last yellow leaves
fluttering before the cold wind ! The dark after-
noons, and the first December snow, seemed to him
far livelier than the August sunshine ; and that he
might make himself the surer about the flight of the
days that were carrying him homeward, he stuck
twenty-one sticks deep in a corner of the garden,
when he was three weeks from the holidays, and
pulled one up every day with a great wrench, throw-
ing it to a distance with a vigour of will which
would have carried it to limbo, if it had been in the
nature of sticks to travel so far.

But it was worth purchasing, even at the heavy

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 283

price of the Latin Grammar — the happiness of seeing
the bright light in the parlour at home, as the gig
passed noiselessly over the snow-covered bridge : the
happiness of passing from the cold air to the warmth,
and the kisses and the smiles of that famiUar hearth,
where the pattern of the rug and the grate and the fire-
irons were "first ideas" that it was no more possible
to criticise than the solidity and extension of matter.
There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those
scenes where we were born, where objects became dear
to us before we had known the labour of choice, and
where the outer world seemed only an extension of
our own personality : we accepted and loved it as
we accepted our own sense of existence and our own
limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that furni-
ture of our early home might look if it were put up
to auction ; an improved taste in upholstery scorns
it; and is not the striving after something better
and better in our surroundings, the grand character-
istic that distinguishes man from the brute — or, to
satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that dis-
tinguishes the British man from the foreign brute ?
But heaven knows where that striving might lead
us, if our afiections had not a trick of twining round
those old inferior things — if the loves and sanctities
of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory.

284 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

One's deliglit in an elderberry bush overhanging the
confused leafage of a hedgerow bank, as a more
gladdening sight than the finest cistus or fuchsia
spreading itself on the softest undulating turf, is
an entirely unjustifiable preference to a landscape-
gardener, or to any of those severely regulated minds
who are free from the weakness of any attachment
that does not rest on a demonstrable superiority of
qualities. And there is no better reason for prefer-
ring this elderberry bush than that it stirs an early
memory — that it is no novelty in my life, speaking
to me merely through my present sensibilities to form
and colour, but the long companion of my existence,
that wove itself into my joys when joys were vivid.

CHAPTER 11.

THE CHEISTMAS HOLIDAYS.

EiNE old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy
face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fash-
ion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and
colour with all the heightening contrast of frost and
snow.

Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undula-
tions softer than the limbs of infancy ; it lay with
the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof,
making the dark-red gables stand out with a new
depth of colour ; it weighed heavily on the laurels
and fir-trees till it fell from them with a shuddering
sound ; it clothed the rough turnip-field with white-
ness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches ;
the gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts,
and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast
stood as if petrified " in unrecumbent sadness ; "
there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens,

286 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

too, were one still, pale cloud — ^no sound or motion
in anything but the dark river, that flowed and
moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christ-
mas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on
the out-door world, for he meant to light up home
with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of in-
door colour, and give a keener edge of delight to
the warm fragrance of food : he meant to prepare
a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the
primitive fellowship of kindred, and make the sun-
shine of familiar human faces as welcome as the
hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on
the homeless — fell but hardly on the homes where
the hearth was not very warm, and where the food
had little fragrance ; where the human faces had no
sunshine in them, but rather the leaden, blank-eyed
gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season
meant well ; and if he has not learnt the secret how
to bless men impartially, it is because his father
Time, with ever-unrelenting purpose, still hides that
secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.

And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Tom's
fresh delight in home, was not, he thought, some-
how or other, quite so happy as it had always been
before. The red berries were just as abundant on
the holly, and he and Maggie had dressed all the

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 287

windows and mantelpieces and picture-frames on
Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, wedding
the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the
black-berried ivy. There had been singing under
the windows after midnight — supernatural singing,
Maggie always felt, in spite of Tom's contemptuous
insistence that the singers were old Patch, the parish
clerk, and the rest of the church choir : she trembled
with awe when their caroling broke in upon her
dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was
always thrust away by the vision of angels resting
on the parted cloud. But the midnight chant had
helped as usual to lift the morning above the level
of common days ; and then there was the smell of
hot toast and ale from the kitchen, at the breakfast
hour ; the favourite anthem, the green boughs, and
the short sermon, gave the appropriate festal cha-
racter to the church-going; and aunt and uncle
Moss, with aU their seven children, were looking
like so many reflectors of the bright parlour fire,
when the church-goers came back, stamping the
snow from their feet. The plum-pudding was of
the same handsome roundness as ever, and came in
with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it had
been heroically snatched from the nether fires into
which it had been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans ;

288 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

the dessert was as splendid as ever, witli its golden
oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light and
dark of apple jelly and damson cheese : in all these
things Christmas was as it had always been since
Tom could remember ; it was only distinguished, if
by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.

Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr TuUiver.
He was irate and defiant, and Tom, though he
espoused his father's quarrels and shared his father's
sense of injury, was not without some of the feel-
ing that oppressed Maggie when Mr Tulliver got
louder and more angry in narration and assertion
with the increased leisure of dessert. Tlie attention
that Tom might have concentrated on his nuts and
wine was distracted by a sense that there were
rascally enemies in the world, and that the business
of grown-up life could hardly be conducted without
a good deal of quarrelling. Now Tom was not fond
of quarrelling, unless it could soon be put an end
to by a fair stand-up fight with an adversary whom
he had every chance of thrashing ; and his father's
irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he
never accounted to himself for the feeling, or con-
ceived the notion that his father was faulty in this
respect.

The particular embodiment of the evil principle

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 289

now exciting Mr TuUiver's determined resistance
was Mr Pivart, who, having lands higher up the
Eipple, was taking measures for their irrigation,
which either were, or would be, or were bound to be
(on the principle that water was water), an infringe-
ment on Mr TuUiver's legitimate share of water-
power. Dix, who had a mill on the stream, was a
feeble auxiliary of Old Harry compared with Pivart.
Dix had been brought to his senses by arbitration,
and Wakem's advice had not carried him far ; no :
Dix, Mr Tulliver considered, had been as good as
nowhere in point of law ; and in the intensity of
his indignation against Pivart, his contempt for a
baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air of
a friendly attachment He had no male audience
to-day except Mr Moss, who knew nothing, as he
said, of the " natur' o' mills," and could only assent
to Mr TuUiver's arguments on the a priori groimd
of famUy relationship and monetary obUgation ; but
Mr Tulliver did not talk with the futUe intention of
convincing his audience — he talked to reUeve him-
self; whUe good Mr Moss made strong efforts to
keep his eyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness
which an unusuaUy good dinner produced in his
hard-worked frame. Mrs Moss, more aUve to the
subject, and interested in everything that aifected

VOL. I. T

290 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

her brother, listened and put in a word as often as
maternal preoccupations allowed.

" Why, Pivart 's a new name hereabout, brother,
isn't it ? "' she said : " he didn't own the land in
father's time, nor yours either, before I was married."

" New name ? Yes — I should think it is a new
name," said Mr Tulliver, with angry emphasis.
" Dorlcote Mill 's been in our family a hundred year
and better, and nobody ever heard of a Pivart
meddling with the river, till this fellow came and
bought Bincome's farm out of hand, before anybody
else could so much as say 'snap.' But Til Pivart
him ! " added Mr Tulliver, lifting his glass with a
sense that he had defined his resolution in an un-
mistakable manner.

" You won't be forced to go to law with him, I
hope, brother?" said Mrs Moss, with some anxiety.

" I don't know what I shall be forced to ; but
I know what I shall force him to, with his dykes
and erigations, if there's any law to be brought to
bear o' the right side. I know well enough who's
at the bottom of it ; he's got Wakem to back him
and egg him on. I know Wakem tells him the law
can't touch him for it, but there's folks can handle
the law besides Wakem. It takes a big raskil
to beat him ; but there's bigger to be found, as

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 291

know more o' tli' ins and outs o' the law, else how
came Wakem to lose Brumley's suit for him ? "

Mr Tulliver was a strictly honest man, and proud
of being honest, but he considered that in law the
ends of justice could only be achieved by employing
a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a
sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of
injured honesty to get a game bird with the best
pluck and the strongest spurs.

"Gore's no fool — you needn't tell me that," he
observed presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor
Gritty had been urging that lawyer's capabilities ;
" but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Wakem is.
And water's a very particular thing — you can't pick
it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts
to Old Harry and the lawyers. It's plain enough
what's the rights and the wrongs of water, if you
look at it straightforrard ; for a river's a river, and
if you've got a mill, you must have water to turn
it ; and it's no use telling me, Pivart's erigation
and nonsense won't stop my wheel : I know what
belongs to water better than that. Talk to me o'
what th' engineers say ! I say it's common sense,
as Pivart's dykes must do me an injury. But if
that's their engineering, I'U pub Tom to it by-and-
by, and he shall see if he can't find a bit more sense

292 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

in til' engineering business than what that comes
to."

Tom, looking round with some anxiety at this
announcement of his prospects, unthinkingly with-
drew a small rattle he was amusing Baby Moss
with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her
own mind with remarkable clearness, instantane-
ously expressed her sentiments in a piercing yell,
and was not to be appeased even by the restoration
of the rattle, feeling apparently that the original
wrong of having it taken from her remained in all
its force. Mrs Moss hurried away with her into
another room, and expressed to Mrs Tulliver, who
accompanied her, the conviction that the dear child
had good reasons for crying ; implying that if it
was supposed to be the rattle that baby clamoured
for, she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly
justifiable yell being quieted, Mrs Moss looked at
her sister-in-law and said —

" I'm sorry to see brother so put out about this
water work."

" It's your brother's way, Mrs Moss ; I'd never
anything o' that sort before I was married," said Mrs
Tulliver, with a half-implied reproach. She always
spoke of her husband as "your brother'' to Mrs
Moss, in any case when his line of conduct was

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 293

not matter of pure admiration. Amiable Mrs Tiil-
liver, who was never angry in her life, had yet her
mild share of that spirit without which she could
hardly have been at once a Dodson and a woman.
Being always on the defensive towards her own
sisters, it was natural that she should be keenly
conscious of her superiority, even as the weakest
Dodson, over a husband's sister, who, besides being
poorly off, and inclined to " hang on " her brother,
had the good-natured submissiveness of a large,
easy-tempered, untidy, prolific woman, with affec-
tion enough in her not only for her own husband
and abundant children, but for any number of col-
lateral relations.

" I hope and pray he won't go to law," said Mrs
Moss, " for there's never any knowing where that 11
end. And the right doesn't allays win. This Mr
Pivart 's a rich man, by what I can make out, and
the rich mostly get things their own way."

" As to that," said Mrs Tulliver, stroking her
dress down, " I've seen what riches are in my own
family; for my sisters have got husbands as can
afford to do pretty much what they like. But I
think sometimes I shall be drove off my head with
the talk about this law and erigation ; and my
sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don't know

294 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

what it is to marry a man like your brother — how
should they ? Sister Pullet has her own way from
morning till night."

" WeU" said Mrs Moss, "I don't think I should
like my husband if he hadn't got any wits of his
own, and I had to find head-piece for him. It's a
deal easier to do what pleases one's husband, than
to be puzzling what else one should do."

" If people come to talk o' doing what pleases
their husbands," said Mrs Tulliver, with a faint
imitation of her sister Glegg, " I'm sure your brother
might have waited a long whiLe before he'd have
found a wife that 'ud have let him have his say in
everything, as I do. It's nothing but law and eriga-
tion now, from when we first get up in the morn-
ing till we go to bed at night ; and I never con-
tradict him ; I only say — ' Well, Mr Tulliver, do as
you like ; but whativer you do, don't go to law.' "

Mrs Tulliver, as we have seen, was not without
influence over her husband. No woman is; she
can always incline him to do either what she wishes,
or the reverse ; and on the composite impulses that
were threatening to hurry Mr Tulliver into " law,"
Mrs Tulliver's monotonous pleading had doubtless
its share of force ; it might even be comparable to
that proverbial feather which has the credit or dis-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 295

credit of breaking the camel's back ; though, on a
strictly impartial view, the blame ought rather to
lie with the previous weight of feathers which had
already placed the back in such imminent peril, that
an otherwise innocent feather could not settle on it
without mischief Not that Mrs Tulliver's feeble
beseeching could have had this feather's weight
in virtue of her single personality ; but whenever
she departed from entire assent to her husband, he
saw in her the representative of the Dodson family ;
and it was a guiding principle with Mr Tulliver, to
let the Dodsons know that they were not to domi-
neer over Mm, or — more specifically — that a male
Tulliver was far more than equal to four female
Dodsons, even though one of them was Mrs Glegg.

But not even a direct argument from that typical
Dodson female herself against his going to law,
could have heightened his disposition towards it so
much as the mere thought of Wakem, continually
freshened by the sight of the too able attorney on
market-days. Wakem, to his certain knowledge, was
(metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Pivart's
irrigation : Wakem had tried to make Dix stand out,
and go to law about the dam : it was unquestion-
ably Wakem who had caused Mr Tulliver to lose the
suit about the right of road and the bridge that

296 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

made a thoroughfare of his land for every vagabond
who preferred an opportunity of damaging private
property to walking like an honest man along the
high-road : all lawyers were more or less rascals, but
Wakem's rascality was of that peculiarly aggravated
kind which placed itself in opposition to that form
of right embodied in Mr Tulliver's interests and
opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, the
injured miller had recently, in borrowing the five
hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little busi-
ness to Wakem's office on his own account. A hook-
nosed glib fellow ! as cool as a cucumber — always
looking so sure of his game ! And it was vexatious
that Lawyer Gore was not more like him, but was a
bald, round-featured man, with bland manners and
fat hands ; a game-cock that you would be rash to
bet upon against Wakem. Gore was a sly fellow ;
his weakness did not lie on the side of scrupulosity :
but the largest amount of winking, however signifi-
cant, is not equivalent to seeing through a stone
wall ; and confident as Mr Tulliver was in his
principle that water was water, and in the direct in-
ference that Pivart had not a leg to stand on in this
aftair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspi-
cion that Wakem had more law to show against this
Rationally) irrefragable inference, than Gore could

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 297

show for it. But then, if they went to law, there was
a chance for Mr Tulliver to employ Counsellor Wylde
on his side, instead of having that admirable bully
against him ; and the prospect of seeing a witness of
Wakem's made to perspire and become confounded,
as Mr Tulliver's witness had once been, was alluring
to the love of retributive justice.

Much rumination had Mr Tulliver on these puz-
zling subjects during his rides on the grey horse —
much turning of the head from side to side, as the
scales dipped alternately ; but the probable result
was still out of sight, only to be reached through
much hot argument and iteration in domestic and
social life. That initial stage of the dispute which
consisted in the narration of the case and the
enforcement of Mr Tulliver's views concerning it
throughout the entire circle of his connections would
necessarily take time, and at the beginning of Feb-
ruary, when Tom was going to school again, there
were scarcely any new items to be detected in his
father's statement of the case against Pivart, or any
more specific indication of the measures he was bent
on taking against that rash contravener of the prin-
ciple that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is
likely to generate heat instead of progress, and Mr
Tulliver's heat was certainly more and more palpable.

298 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

If there liad been no new evidence on any other point,
there had been new evidence that Pivart was as
" thick as mud " with Wakem.

" Father," said Tom, one evening near the end of
the holidays, " uncle Grlegg says Lawyer Wakem is
going to send his son to Mr Stelling. It isn't true
— what they said about his going to be sent to
France. You won't like me to go to school with
Wakem's son, shall you ? ''

" It's no matter for that, my boy," said Mr Tul-
liver ; " don't you learn anything bad of him, that's
all. The lad's a poor deformed creatur, and takes
after his mother in the face : I think there isn't
much of his father in him. It's a sign Wakem thinks
high o' Mr Stelling, as he sends his son to him, and
Wakem knows meal from bran."

Mr Tulliver in his heart was rather proud of the
fact that his son was to have the same advantages
as Wakem's : but Tom was not at all easy on the
point ; it would have been much clearer if the law-
yer's son had not been deformed, for then Tom would
have had the prospect of pitching into him with all
that freedom which is derived from a high moral
sanction.

CHAPTER III.

THE NEW SCHOOLFELLOW.

It was a cold, wet January day on which Tom went
back to school ; a day quite in keeping with this
severe phase of his destiny. If he had not carried
in his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small
Dutch doll for little Laura, there would have been
no ray of expected pleasure to enliven the general
gloom. But he liked to think how Laura would put
out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugar-
candy ; and, to give the greater keenness to these
pleasures of imagination, he took out the parcel, made
a small hole in the paper, and bit off a crystal or two,
which had so solacing an effect under the confined
prospect and damp odours of the gig-umbrella, that
he repeated the process more than once on his way.
" Well, Tulliver, we're glad to see you again,'' said
Mr Stelling, heartily. " Take off your wrappings
and come into the study till dinner. You'll find a
bright fire there, and a new companion."

300 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took
off" his woollen comforter and other wrappings.
He had seen Philip Wakem at St Ogg's, but had
always turned his eyes away from him as quickly
as possible. He would have disliked having a de-
formed boy for his companion, even if Philip had
not been the son of a bad man. And Tom did not
see how a bad man's son could be very good. His
own father was a good man, and he would readily
have fought any one who said the contrary. He
was in a state of mingled embarrassment and de-
fiance as he followed Mr Stelling to' the study.

" Here is a new companion for you, to shake hands
with, TuUiver," said that gentleman on entering the
study — " Master Philip Wakem. I shall leave you
to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already
know something of each other, I imagine ; for you
are neighbours at home.''

Tom looked confused and awkward, while Philip
rose and glanced at him timidly. Tom did not like
to go up and put out his hand, and he was not pre-
pared to say, ''How do you do?'' on so short a
notice.

Mr Stelling wisely turned away, and closed the
door behind him : boys' shyness only wears off" in
the absence of their elders.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 301

Philip was at once too proud and too timid to
walk towards Tom. He thought, or rather felt, that
Tom had an aversion to looking at him : every one,
almost, disliked looking at him ; and his deformity
was more conspicuous when he walked. So they
remained without shaking hands or even speaking,
while Tom went to the fire and warmed himself,
every now and then casting furtive glances at Philip,
who seemed to be drawing absently first one object
and then another on a piece of paper he had before
him. He had seated himself again, and as he drew,
was thinking what he could say to Tom, and trying
to overcome his own repugnance to making the first
advances.

Tom began to look oftener and longer at Philip's
face, for he could see it without noticing the hump,
and it was really not a disagreeable face — very old-
looking, Tom thought. He wondered how much
older Philip was than himself. An anatomist — even
a mere physiognomist — would have seen that the
deformity of Philip's spine was not a congenital
hump, but the result of an accident in infancy ; but
you do not expect from Tom any acquaintance with
such distinctions : to him, Philip was simply a hump-
back. He had a vague notion that the deformity of
Wakem's son had some relation to the lawyer's ras-

302 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

cality, of which he had so often heard his father talk
with hot emphasis ; and he felt, too, a half-admitted
fear of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who, not
being able to fight you, had cunning ways of doing
you a mischief by the sly. There was a hump-
backed tailor in the neighbourhood of Mr Jacobs'
academy, who was considered a very unamiable
character, and was much hooted after by public-
spirited boys solely on the ground of his unsatisfac-
tory moral qualities ; so that Tom was not without
a basis of fact to go upon. Still, no face could be
more unlike that ugly tailor's than this melancholy
boy's face; the brown hair round it waved and
curled at the ends like a girl's : Tom thought that
truly pitiable. This Wakem was a pale, puny fellow,
and it was quite clear he would not be able to play
at anything worth speaking of ; but he handled his
pencil in an enviable manner, and was apparently
making one thing after another without any trouble.
What was he drawing ? Tom was quite warm now,
and wanted something new to be going forward. It
was certainly more agreeable to have an ill-natured
humpback as a companion than to stand looking out
of the study window at the rain, and kicking his
foot against the washboard in solitude ; something

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 303

would happen every day — " a quarrel or something \*
and Tom thought he should rather like to show
Philip that he had better not try his spiteful tricks
on Mm, He suddenly walked across the hearth, and
looked over Philip's paper.

"Why, that's a donkey with panniers — and a
spaniel, and partridges in the com \" he exclaimed,
his tongue being completely loosed by surprise and
admiration. " 0 my buttons ! I wish I could draw
like that. I'm to leam drawing this half— I wonder
if I shall learn to make dogs and donkeys !"

"0, you can do them without learning" said
Philip ; " I never learned drawing."

"Never learned?" said Tom, in amazement. "Why,
when I make dogs and horses, and those things,
the heads and the legs won't come right ; though
I can see how they ought to be very well. I can
make houses, and all sorts of chimneys — chimneys
going all down the wall, and windows in the roof,
and all that. But I daresay I could do dogs and
horses if I was to try more,'' he added, reflecting
that Philip might falsely suppose that he was gomg
to '' knock under," if he were too frank about the
imperfection of his accomplishments.

"0 yes," said Philip, "it's very easy. YouVe

304 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

only to look well at things, and draw them over and
over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter
the next time."

"But haven't you been taught anything V said
Tom, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that
Philip's crooked back might be the source of remark-
able faculties. " I thought you'd been to school a long
while."

"Yes," said Philip, smiling, "IVe been taught
Latin, and Greek, and mathematics, — and writing,
and such things."

" 0 but, I say, you don't like Latin, though, do
you ? " said Tom, lowering his voice confidentially.

" Pretty well ; I don't care much about it," said
Philip.

" Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the Pro-
price quce maribus" said Tom, nodding his head
sideways, as much as to say, " that was the test : it
was easy talking till you came to that/'

Philip felt some bitter complacency in the pro-
mising stupidity of this well-made active-looking
boy ; but made polite by his own extreme sensitive-
ness, as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked
his inclination to laugh, and said, quietly,

" I've done with the grammar ; I don't learn that
any more."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 305

"Then you won't have the same lessons as I
shall?" said Tom, with a sense of disappointment.

" No ; but I daresay I can help you. I shall be
very glad to help you if I can."

Tom did not say " Thank you," for he was quite
absorbed in the thought that Wakem's son dii
not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been
expected.

"I say/' he said presently, "do you love your
father?"

" Yes," said Philip, colouring deeply ; " don't you
love yours?"

" 0 yes I only wanted to know," said Tom,

rather ashamed of himself, now he saw Philip
colouring and looking uncomfortable. He found
much difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind
towards the son of Lawyer Wakem, and it had
occurred to him that if Philip disliked his father,
that fact might go some way towards clearing up
his perplexity.

" Shall you learn drawing now?" he said, by way
of changing the subject.

"No," said Philip. "My father wishes me to
give all my time to other things now."

"What! Latin, and Euclid, and those things?"
said Tom.

VOL. I. U

306 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

"Yes/' said Philip, who had left off using his
pencil, and was resting his head on one hand, while
Tom was leaning forward on both elbows, and
looking with increasing admiration at the dog and
the donkey.

"And you don't mind that?" said Tom, with
strong curiosity.

" No : I like to know what everybody else knows.
I can study what I like by-and-by."

" I can't think why anybody should learn Latin,"
said Tom. " It's no good.''

" It's part of the education of a gentleman," said
Philip. " All gentlemen learn the same things."

"What! do you think Sir John Crake, the
master of the harriers, knows Latin ? " said Tom,
who had often thought he should like to resemble
Sir John Crake.

" He learnt it when he was a boy, of course,"
said Philip. " But I daresay he's forgotten it."

"0, well, I can do that, then," said Tom, not
with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious
satisfaction at the idea that, as far as Latin was
concerned, there was no hindrance to his resemblmg
Sir John Crake. " Only you're obliged to remember
it while you're at school, else you Ve got to learn
ever so many lines of 'Speaker.' Mr Stelling's

, THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 307

very particular — did you know? He'll have you
up ten times if you say 'nam' for *jam' .... he
won't let you go a letter wrong, / can tell you.''

" 0, 1 don't mind," said Philip, unable to choke a
laugh ; " I can remember things easily. And there
are some lessons I'm very fond of. I'm very fond
of Greek history, and everythmg about the Greeks.
I should like to have been a Greek and fought the
Persians, and then have come home and have
written tragedies, or else have been listened to by
everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have
died a grand death." (Philip, you perceive, was
not without a wish to impress the well-made bar-
barian with a sense of his mental superiority.)

"Why, were the Greeks great fighters?" said
Tom, who saw a vista in this direction. " Is there
anything like David, and Goliath, and Samson, in
the Greek history ? Those are the only bits I like
in the history of the Jews."

" 0, there are very fine stories of that sort about
the Greeks — about the heroes of early times who
killed the wild beasts, as Samson did. And in
the Odyssey — that's a beautiful poem — there's a
more wonderful giant than Goliath — Polypheme,
who had only one eye in the middle of his fore-
head; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and

308 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

cunning, got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into
this one eye, and made him roar like a thousand
buUs."

"0 what fun!" said Tom, jumping away from
the table, and stamping first with one leg and then
the other. " I say, can you tell me all about those
stories ? Because I shan't learn Greek, you know.
.... Shall I ? " he added, pausing in his stamping
with a sudden alarm, lest the contrary might be
possible. "Does every gentleman learn Greek?
.... Will Mr Stelling make me begin with it, do
you think?"

"No, I should think not — very likely not," said
Philip. "But you may read those stories without
knowing Greek. I've got them in English."

"0 but I don't like reading; I'd sooner have
you tell them me. But only the fighting ones, you
know. My sister Maggie is always wanting to tell
me stories — but they're stupid things. Girls' stories
always are. Can you tell a good many fighting
stories?"

" 0 yes," said Philip ; " lots of them, besides the
Greek stories. I can tell you about Kichard Coeur-
de-Lion and Saladin, and about William Wallace,
and Robert Bruce, and James Douglas — I know no
end.''

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 309

"You're older than I am, aren't you?" said Tonu
" Why, how old are you ? I m fifteen.''
" I'm only going in fourteen," said Tom. " But
I thrashed all the fellows at Jacobs' — that's where
I was before I came here. And I beat 'em all at
bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr Stelling would
let us go fishing. I could show you how to fish.
You could fish, couldn't you ? It's only standing,
and sitting still, you know."

Tom, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip
in his favour. This hunchback must not suppose
that his acquaintance with fighting stories put him
on a par with an actual fighting hero like Tom
Tulliver. Philip winced under this allusion to his
unfitness for active sports, and he answered almost
peevishly —

" I can't bear fishing. I think people look like
fools sitting watching a line hour after hour — or
else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing."
" Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools
when they landed a big pike, I can tell you," said
Tom, who had never caught anything that was
" big" in his life, but whose imagination was on the
stretch with indignant zeal for the honour of sport.
Wakem's son, it was plain, had his disagreeable

310 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

points, and must be kept in due check. Happily
for the harmony of this first interview, they were
now called to dinner, and Philip was not allowed to
develop farther his unsound views on the subject
of fishing. But Tom said to himself, that was
just what he should have expected from a hunch-
back.

CHAPTER IV.

"THE YOUNG IDEA."

The alternations of feeling in that first dialogue
between Tom and Philip continued to mark their
intercourse even after many weeks of schoolboy-
intimacy. Tom never quite lost the feeling that
Philip, being the son of a " rascal," was his natural
enemy, never thoroughly overcame his repulsion to
Philip's deformity : he was a boy who adhered ten-
aciously to impressions once received ; as with all
minds in which mere perception predominates over
thought and emotion, the external remained to him
rigidly what it was in the first instance. But then,
it was impossible not to like Philip's company when
he was in a good humour ; he could help one so
well in one's Latin exercises, which Tom regarded
as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out by
a lucky chance ; and he could tell such wonderful
fighting stories about Hal of the Wynd, for ex-

312 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

ample, and other heroes who were especial favour-
ites with Tom, because they laid about them with
heavy strokes. He had small opinion of Saladin,
whose scimitar could cut a cushion in two in an
instant : who wanted to cut cushions ? That was a
stupid story, and he didn't care to hear it again.
But when Kobert Bruce, on the black pony, rose in
his stirrups, and, lifting his good battle-axe, cracked
at once the helmet and the skull of the too-hasty
knight at Bannockburn, then Tom felt all the
exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoa-
nut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with
the poker. Philip, in his happier moods, indulged
Tom to the top of his bent, heightening the crash
and bang and fury of every fight with all the artil-
lery of epithets and similes at his command. But
he was not always in a good humour or happy
mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility
which had escaped him in their first interview, was
a symptom of a perpetually-recurring mental ail-
ment— half of it nervous irritability, half of it the
heart-bitterness produced by the sense of his de-
formity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance
seemed to him to be charged either with offensive
pity or with ill-repressed disgust — at the very least
it was an indifferent glance, and Philip felt indif-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 313

ference as a child of the south feels the chill air of
a northern spring. Poor Tom's blundering patron-
age when they were out of doors together would
sometimes make him turn upon the well-meaning
lad quite savagely ; and his eyes, usually sad and
quiet, would flash with anything but playful light-
ning. No wonder Tom retained his suspicions of
the humpback.

But Philip's self-taught skill in drawing was
another link between them ; for Tom found, to his
disgust, that his new drawing-master gave him no
dogs and donkeys to draw, but brooks and rustic
bridges and ruins, all with a general softness of
black-lead surface, indicating that nature, if any-
thing, was rather satiny ; and as Tom's feeling for
the picturesque in landscape was at present quite
latent, it is not surprising that Mr Goodrich's pro-
ductions seemed to him an uninteresting form of
art. Mr Tulliver, having a vague intention that
Tom should be put to some business which included
the drawing out of plans and maps, had complained
to Mr Riley, when he saw him at Mudport, that
Tom seemed to be learning nothing of that sort ;
whereupon that obliging adviser had suggested that
Tom should have drawing-lessons. Mr TuUiver
must not mind paying extra for drawing : let Tom

314 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

be made a good draughtsman, and he would be able
to turn his pencil to any purpose. So it was
ordered that Tom should have drawing -lessons ;
and whom should Mr Stelling have selected as a
master if not Mr Goodrich, who was considered
quite at the head of his profession within a circuit
of twelve miles round King's Lorton ? By which
means Tom learned to make an extremely fine point
to his pencil, and to represent landscape with a
" broad generality," which, doubtless from a narrow
tendency in his mind to details, he thought ex-
tremely dull.

All this, you remember, happened in those dark
ages when there were no schools of design — before
schoolmasters were invariably men of scrujfiilous
integrity, and before the clergy were all men of
enlarged minds and varied culture. In those less-
favoured days, it is no fable that there were other
clergymen besides Mr Stelling who had narrow
intellects and large wants, and whose income, by a
logical confusion to which Fortune, being a female
as well as blindfold, is peculiarly liable, was pro-
portioned not to their wants but to their intellect —
with which income has clearly no inherent relation.
The problem these gentlemen had to solve was to
readjust the proportion between their wants and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 315

their income ; and since wants are not easily starved
to death, the simpler method appeared to be — to
raise their income. There was but one way of
doing this : any of those low callings in which men
are obliged to do good work at a low price were
forbidden to clergymen : was it their fault if their
only resource was to turn out very poor work at a
high price ? Besides, how should Mr Stelling be
expected to know that education was a delicate and
difficult business ? any more than an animal endowed
with a power of boring a hole through a rock should
be expected to have wide views of excavation. Mr
Stelling's faculties had been early trained to boring
in a straight line, and he had no faculty to spare.
But among Tom's contemporaries, whose fathers
cast their sons on clerical instruction to find them
ignorant after many days, there were many far less
lucky than Tom Tulliver. Education was almost
entirely a matter of luck — usually of ill-luck — ^in
those distant days. The state of mind in which you
take a billiard-cue or a dice-box in your hand is
one of sober certainty compared with that of old-
fashioned fathers, like Mr Tulliver, when they se-
lected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent
men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on
an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried

316 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

on a successful business in spite of this disadvant-
age, had acquired money enough to give their sons
a better start in life than they had had themselves,
must necessarily take their chance as to the con-
science and the competence of the schoolmaster
whose circular fell in their way, and appeared to
promise so much more than they would ever have
thought of asking for, including the return of linen,
fork, and spoon. It was happy for them if some
ambitious draper of their acquaintance had not
brought up his son to the Church, and if that young
gentleman, at the age of four-and-twenty, had not
closed his college dissipations by an imprudent mar-
riage : otherwise, these innocent fathers, desirous of
doing the best for their offspring, could only escape
the draper's son by happening to be on the founda-
tion of a grammar-school as yet unvisited by com-
missioners, where two or three boys could have, all
to themselves, the advantages of a large and lofty
building, together with a head- master, toothless,
dim-eyed, and deaf, whose erudite indistinctness
and inattention were engrossed by them at the rate
of three hundred pounds a-head — a ripe scholar,
doubtless, when first appointed ; but all ripeness
beneath the sun has a further stage less esteemed
in the market.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 317

Tom Tulliver, then, compared with many other
British youths of his time who have since had to
scramble throuo-h life with some fraorments of more
or less relevant knowledge, and a great deal of
strictly relevant ignorance, was not so very unlucky.
Mr Stclling was a broad-chested healthy man, with
the bearing of a gentleman, a conviction that a
growing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and a
certain hearty kindness in him that made him like
to see Tom looking well and enjoying his dinner ;
not a man of refined conscience, or with any deep
sense of the infinite issues belonging to everyday
duties ; not quite competent to his high offices ;
but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without
private fortune it is difficult to see how tliey could
all live genteelly if they had nothing to do with
education or government. Besides, it was the fault
of Tom's mental constitution that his faculties could
not be nourished on the sort of knowledge Mr Stell
ing had to communicate. A boy bom with a defi-
cient power of apprehending signs and abstractions
must suffer the penalty of his congenital deficiency,
just as if he had been born with one leg shorter
than the other. A method of education sanctioned
by the long practice of our venerable ancestors was
not to give way before the exceptional dulness of a

318 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

boy wlio was merely living at the time then pre-
sent. And Mr Stelling was convinced that a boy
so stupid at signs and abstractions must be stupid
at everything else, even if that reverend gentleman
could have taught him everything else. It was the
practice of our venerable ancestors to apply that in-
genious instrument the thumb-screw, and to tighten
and tighten it in order to elicit non-existent facts :
they had a fixed opinion to begin with, that the
facts were existent, and what had they to do but
to tighten the thumb-screw ? In like manner, Mr
Stelling had a fixed opinion that all boys with any
capacity could learn what it was the only regular
thing to teach : if they were slow, the thumb-screw
must be tightened — the exercises must be insisted
on with increased severity, and a page of Virgil be
awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate a
too languid inclination to Latin verse.

Nevertheless the thumb-screw was relaxed a little
during this second half-year. Philip was so ad-
vanced in his studies, and so apt, that Mr Stelling
could obtain credit by his facility, which required
little help, much more easily than by the trouble-
some process of overcoming Tom's dulness. Gentle-
men with broad chests and ambitious intentions do
sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 319

carry the world before them. Perhaps it is, that
hish achievements demand some other unusual
qualification besides an unusual desire for high
prizes ; perhaps it is that these stalwart gentlemen
are rather indolent, their divince particulum auras
being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty
appetite. Some reason or other there was why
Mr Stelling deferred the execution of many spirited
projects — why he did not begin the editing of his
Greek play, or any other work of scholarship, in his
leisure hours, but, after turning the key of his
private study with much resolution, sat down to
one of Theodore Hook's novels. Tom was gradu-
ally allowed to shuffle through his lessons with less
rigour, and having Philip to help him, he was able
to make some show of having applied his mind
in a confused and blundering way, without being
cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had
been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought
school much more bearable under this modification
of circumstances ; and he went on contentedly
enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly
from things that were not intended as education
at all. What was understood to be his education,
was simply the practice of reading, writing, and
spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of

320 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

unintelligible ideas, and by much failure in the
effort to learn by rote.

Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in
Tom under this training ; perhaps because he was
not a boy in the abstract, existing solely to illustrate
the evils of a mistaken education, but a boy made
of flesh and blood, with dispositions not entirely at
the mercy of circumstances.

There was a great improvement in his bearing,
for example, and some credit on this score was due
to Mr Poulter, the village schoolmaster, who, being
an old Peninsular soldier, was employed to drill Tom
— a source of high mutual pleasure. Mr Poulter,
who was understood by the company at the Black
Swan to have once struck terror into the hearts of
the French, was no longer personally formidable.
He had rather a shrunken appearance, and was
tremulous in the mornings, not from age, but from
the extreme perversity of the King's Lorton boys,
which nothing but gin could enable him to sustain
with any firmness. Still, he carried himself with
martial erectness, had his clothes scrupulously
brushed, and his trousers tightly strapped ; and on
the Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when he
came to Tom, he was always inspired with gin and
old memories, which gave him an exceptionally

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 321

spirited air, as of a superannuated charger who
hears the drum. The drilling-lessons were always
protracted by episodes of warlike narrative, much
more interesting to Tom than Philip's stories out of
the Iliad ; for there were no cannon in the Iliad,
and, besides, Tom had felt some disgust on learning
that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have
existed. But the Duke of Wellington was really
alive, and Bony had not been long dead — therefore
Mr Poulter's reminiscences of the Peninsular War
were removed from all suspicion of being mythical.
Mr Poulter, it appeared, had been a conspicuous
figure at Talavera, and had contributed not a little
to the peculiar: terror with which his regiment of
infantry was regarded by the enemy. On afternoons,
when his memory was more stimulated than usual,
he remembered that the Duke of Wellington had (in
strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened) ex-
pressed his esteem for that fine fellow Poulter. The
very surgeon who attended him in the hospital after
he had received his gun-shot wound, had been pro-
foundly impressed with the superiority of Mr Poul-
ter's flesh : no other flesh would have healed in any-
thing like the same time. On less personal matters
connected with the important warfare in which he
had been engaged, Mr Poulter was more reticent, only
VOL. L X

322 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

taking care not to give the weight of his authority to
any loose notions concerning military history. Any
one who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred
at the siege of Badajos, was especially an object of
silent pity to Mr Poulter ; he wished that prating
person had been run down, and had the breath
trampled out of him at the first go-off, as he himself
had — he might talk about the siege of Badajos then !
Tom did not escape irritating his drilling-master
occasionally, by his curiosity concerning other milit-
ary matters than Mr Boulter's personal experience.

"And General Wolfe, Mr Poulter? wasn't he a
wonderful fighter?'' said Tom, who held the notion
that all the martial heroes commemorated on the
public-house signs were engaged in the war with
Bony.

"Not at all!" said Mr Poulter, contemptuously.
"Nothing o' the sort ! . . . Heads up I" he added,
in a tone of stern command, which delighted Tom,
and made him feel as if he were a regiment in his
own person.

" No, no ! " Mr Poulter would continue, on coming
to a' pause in his discipline. " They'd better not talk
to me about General Wolfe. He did nothing but
die of his wound ; that's a poor haction, I consider.
Any other man 'ud have died o' the wounds I've

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 323

Lad One of my sword-cuts 'ud ha' killed a

fellow like General Wolfe/'

" Mr Poulter," Tom would say, at any allusion to
the sword, " I wish you'd bring your sword and do
the sword-exercise !"

For a long while Mr Poulter only shook his head
in a significant manner at this request, and smiled
patronisingly, as Jupiter may have done when Semele
urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon,
when a sudden shower of heavy rain had detained
Mr Poulter twenty minutes longer than usual at the
Black Swan, the sword was brought — just for Tom
to look at.

" And this is the real sword you fought with in
all the battles, Mr Poulter?'' said Tom, handling the
hilt. " Has it ever cut a Frenchman's head off?"

" Head off? Ah ! and would, if he'd had three
heads."

"But you had a gun and bayonet besides?" said
Tom. "/ should like the gun and bayonet best,
because you could shoot 'em first and spear 'em
after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!" Tom gave the requisite
pantomime to indicate the double enjoyment of pull-
ing the trigger and thrusting the spear.

" Ah, but the sword's the thing when you come
to close fighting," said Mr Poulter, involuntarily

324 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

falling in with Tom's enthusiasm, and drawing the
sword so suddenly that Tom leaped back with much
agility.

" 0 but, Mr Poulter, if you re going to do the
exercise," said Tom, a little conscious that he had
not stood his ground as became an Englishman,
" let me go and call Philip. He'll like to see you,
you know."

"What ! the humpbacked lad?" said Mr Poulter,
contemptuously. " What's the use of his looking on ? "

" 0 but he knows a great deal about fighting,"
said Tom ; " and how they used to fight with bows
and arrows, and battle-axes."

" Let him come then. Ill show him something
difierent from his bows and arrows," said Mr Poul-
ter, coughing, and drawing himself up, while he gave
a little preliminary play to his wrist.

Tom ran in to Philip, who was enjoying his after-
noon's holiday at the piano, in the drawing-room,
picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He
was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous
bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back,
his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, and his lips
wide open, sending forth, with all his might, im-
promptu syllables to a tune of Arne's, which had hit
his fancy.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 325

" Come, Philip," said Tom, bursting in ; " don't
stay roaring Ma la' there — come and see old Poulter
do his sword-exercise in the carriage-house ! "

The jar of this interruption — the discord of Tom's
tones coming across the notes to which Philip was
vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough
to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no
question of Poulter the drilling-master; and Tom,
in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent
Mr Poulter from thinking he was afraid of the sword
when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this
proposition to fetch Philip — though he knew well
enough that Philip hated to hear him mention his
drilling-lessons. Tom would never have done so
inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress
of his personal pride.

Philip shuddered visibly as he paused from his
music. Then turning red, he said, with violent
passion, —

" Get away, you lumbering idiot ! Don't come
bellowing at me — ^you're not fit to speak to any-
thing but a cart-horse ! "

It was not the first time Philip had been made
angry by him, but Tom had never before been
assailed with verbal missiles that he understood so
well

326 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS:

" I'm fit to speak to something better than yon —
you poor-spirited imp ! " said Tom, lighting up im-
mediately at Philip's fire. " You know I won't hit
you, because you're no better than a girl. But I'm
an honest man's son, and your father 's a rogue —
everybody says so ! "

Tom flung out of the room, and slammed the door
after him, made strangely heedless by his anger ;
for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs Stelling,
who was probably not far ofi", was an offence only to
be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact,
that lady did presently descend from her room, in
double wonder at the noise and the subsequent ces-
sation of Philip's music. She found him sitting in
a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.

" What's the matter, Wakem ? What was that
noise about ? Who slammed the door ? "

Philip looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. " It
was TuUiver who came in .... to ask me to go
out with him."

" And what are you in trouble about ? " said Mrs
Stelling.

Philip was not her favourite of the two pupils ;
he was less obliging than Tom, who was made
useful in many ways. Still his father paid more
than Mr Tulliver did, and she meant him to feel

THte MILL ON THE FLOSS. 327

that she behaved exceedingly well to him. Philip,
however, met her advances towards a good under-
standing very much as a caressed mollusc meets
an invitation to show himself out of his shell. Mrs
Stelling was not a loving, tender-hearted woman :
she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted
her waist and patted her curls with a preoccupied
air when she inquired after your welfare. These
things, doubtless, represent a great social power,
but it is not the power of love — and no other power
could win Philip from his personal reserve.

He said, in answer to her question, " My tooth-
ache came on, and made me hysterical again."

This had been the fact once, and Philip was glad
of the recollection — it was like an inspiration to
enable him to excuse his crying. He had to accept
eau-de-cologne, and to refuse creosote in conse-
quence ; but that was easy.

Meanwhile Tom, who had for the first time sent
a poisoned arrow into Philip's heart, had returned to
the carriage-house, where he found Mr Poulter, with
a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of his
sword-exercise on probably observant but inappre-
ciative rats. But Mr Poulter was a host in himself ;
that is to say, he admired himself more than a whole
army of spectators could have admired him. He

328 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

took no notice of Tom's return, being too entirely-
absorbed in the cut and tbrust — the solemn one,
two, three, four ; and Tom, not without a slight
feeling of alarm at Mr Poulter's fixed eye and
hungry-looking sword, which seemed impatient for
something else to cut besides the air, admired the
performance from as great a distance as possible. It
was not until Mr Poulter paused and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead, that Tom felt the
full charm of the sword-exercise, and wished it to
be repeated.

"Mr Poulter," said Tom, when the sword was
being finally sheathed, " I wish you'd lend me your
sword a little while to keep.'*

"No, no, young gentleman," said Mr Poulter,
shaking his head decidedly, " you might do your-
self some mischief with it."

" No, I'm sure I wouldn't — I'm sure I'd take care
and not hurt myself I shouldn't take it out of the
sheath much, but I could ground arms with it, and
all that."

"No, no, it won't do, I tell you; it won't do,"
said Mr Poulter, preparing to depart. " What 'ud
Mr Stelling say to me ? "

" 0, I say, do, Mr Poulter ! I'd give you my five-
shilling piece if you'd let me keep the sword a week

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 329

Look here ! " said Tom, reaching out the attractively
large round of silver. The young dog calculated the
effect as well as if he had been a philosopher.
' " Well," said Mr Poulter, with still deeper gravity,
" you must keep it out of sight, you know."

"0 yes, ril keep it under the bed," said Tom,
eagerly, " or else at the bottom of my large box."

" And let me see, now, whether you can draw it
out of the sheath without hurting yourself"

That process having been gone through more
than once, Mr Poulter felt that he had acted with
scrupulous conscientiousness, and said, " Well, now,
Master Tulliver, if I take the crown-piece, it is to
make sure as you'll do no mischief with the sword."

" 0 no, indeed, Mr Poulter," said Tom, delightedly
handing him the crown-piece, and grasping the
sword, which, he thought, might have been lighter
with advantage.

" But if Mr Stelling catches you carrying it in,*'
said Mr Poulter, pocketing the crown-piece provi-
sionally while he raised this new doubt.

"0, he always keeps in his up-stairs study on
Saturday afternoons," said Tom, who disliked any-
thing sneaking, but was not disinclined to a little
stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the
sword in triumph, mixed with dread — dread that

330 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

he might encounter Mr or Mrs Stelling — to his bed-
room, where, after some consideration, he hid it in
the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night
he fell asleep in the thought that he would astonish
Maggie with it when she came — tie it round his
waist with his red comforter, and make her believe
that the sword was his own, and that he was going
to be a soldier. There was nobody but Maggie who
would be silly enough to believe him, or whom he
dared allow to know that he had a sword; and
Maggie was really coming next week to see Tom,
before she went to a boarding-school with Lucy.

If you think a lad of thirteen would not have
been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise
man, who, although you are devoted to a civil call-
ing, requiring you to look bland rather than formid-
able, yet never, since you had a beard, threw your-
self into a martial attitude, and frowned before the
looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers
would be maintained if there were not pacific peo-
ple at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers.
War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly
cease for want of a " pubKc."

CHAPTER V.

MAGGIE'S SECOND VISIT.

Tms last breach between the two lads was not
readily mended, and for some time they spoke to
each other no more than was necessary. Their
natural antipathy of temperament made resentment
an easy passage to hatred, and in Philip the transi-
tion seemed to have begun : there was no malignity
in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility
that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of
repulsion. The ox — we may venture to assert it
on the authority of a great classic — is not given to
use his teeth as an instrument of attack ; and Tom
was an excellent bovine lad, who ran at questionable
objects in a truly ingenuous bovine manner; but he
had blundered on Philip's tenderest point, and had
caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied
the means with the nicest precision and the most
envenomed spite. Tom saw no reason why they

332 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

should not make up this quarrel as they had done
many others, by behaving as if nothing had hap-
pened ; for though he had never before said to
Philip that his father was a rogue, this idea had so
habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation
between himself and his dubious schoolfellow, whom
he could neither like nor dislike, that the mere
utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it
did to Philip. And he had a right to say so, when
Philip hectored over him, and called him names.
But perceiving that his first advances towards amity
were not met, he relapsed into his least favourable
disposition towards Philip, and resolved never to
appeal to him either about drawing or exercises
again. They were only so far civil to each other as
was necessary to prevent their state of feud from
being observed by Mr Stelling, who would have
" put down " such nonsense with great vigour.

When Maggie came, however, she could not help
looking with growing interest at the new school-
fellow, although he was the son of that wicked
Lawyer Wakem, who made her father so angry.
She had arrived in the middle of school-hours, and
had sat by while Philip went through his lessons
with Mr Stelling. Tom, some weeks ago, had sent
her word that Philip knew no end of stories — not

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 333

stupid stories like hers ; and she was convinced now
from her own observation that he must be very-
clever : she hoped he would think her rather clever
too, when she came to talk to him. Maggie, more-
over, had rather a tenderness for deformed things ;
she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it
seemed to her that the lambs which were quite
strong and well made wouldn't mind so much about
being petted ; and she was especially fond of petting
objects that would think it very delightful to be pet-
ted by her. She loved Tom very dearly, but she often
wished that he cared more about her loving him.

" I think Philip Wakem seems a nice boy, Tom,"
she said, when they went out of the study together
into the garden, to pass the interval before dinner.
" He couldn't choose his father, you know ; and I've
read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as
good parents who had bad children. And if Philip
is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry for
him because his father is not a good maa You
like him, don't you?"

" 0, he's a queer fellow," said Tom, curtly, " and
he's as sulky as can be with me, because I told him
his father was a rogue. And I'd a right to tell him
so, for it was true — and he began it, with calling me
names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Magsie,

334 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

will you? IVe got ' something I want to do up-
stairs."

" Can't I go too?'^ said Maggie, who, in this first
day of meeting again, loved Tom's shadow.

" No, it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by,
not yet," said Tom, skipping away.

In the afternoon the boys were at their books in
the study, preparing the morrow's lessons, that they
might have a holiday in the evening in honour of
Maggie's arrival. Tom was hanging over his Latin
grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but
impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters ;
and Philip, at the other end of the room, was busy
with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence
that excited Maggie's curiosity ; he did not look at
all as if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low
stool at nearly a right angle with the two boys,
watching first one and then the other ; and Philip,
looking off his book once towards the fireplace,
caught the pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon
him. He thought this sister of Tulliver's seemed a
nice little thing, quite unlike her brother ; he wished
he had a little sister. What was it, he wondered,
that made Maggie's dark eyes remind him of the
stories about princesses being turned into animals ?
I think it was that her eyes were full of

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 335

unsatisfied iutelligence, and unsatisfied, beseeching
affection.

"I say, Magsie," said Tom at last, shutting his
books and putting them away with the energy and
decision of a perfect master in the art of leaving off",
" IVe done my lessons now. Come up-stairs with
me."

" What is it ? " said Maggie, when they were out-
side the door, a slight suspicion crossing her mind
as she remembered Tom's preliminary visit up-stairs.
" It isn't a trick you're going to play me, now ?"

" No, no, Maggie," said Tom, in his most coaxing
tone ; " it's something you'll like ever so/'

He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers
round his waist, and, twined together in this way,
they went up-stairs.

" I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you
know," said Tom, "else I shall get fifty lines."

"Is it alive?" said Maggie, whose imagination
had settled for the moment on the idea that Tom
kept a ferret clandestinely.

" 0, I shan't tell you," said he. " Now you go
into that corner and hide your face, while I reach
it out," he added, as he locked the bedroom door
behind them. "I'll tell you when to turn round.
You mustn't squeal out, you know.''

336 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" 0, but if you frighten me, I shall," said Maggie,
beginning to look rather serious.

" You won't be frightened, you silly thing," said
Tom. " Go and hide your face, and mind you don't
peep/'

" Of course I shan't peep," said Maggie, disdain-
fully ; and she buried her face in the pillow like a
person of strict honour.

But Tom looked round warily as he walked to
the closet ; then he' stepped into the narrow space,
and almost closed the door. Maggie kept her face
buried without the aid of principle, for in that dream-
suggestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she
was, and her thoughts were busy with the poor de-
formed boy, who was so clever, when Tom called
out, " Now then, Magsie ! "

Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted
arrangement of effects could have enabled Tom to pre-
sent so striking a figure as he did to Maggie when she
looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a
face which had no more than the faintest hint of
flaxen eyebrow, together with a pair of amiable blue-
grey eyes and round pink cheeks that refused to
look formidable, let him frown as he would before
the looking-glass — (Philip had once told him of a
man who had a horse-shoe frown, and Tom had tried

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 337

with all his frowning-might to make a horse-shoe on
his forehead) — he had had recourse to that unfailing
source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made
himself a pair of black eyebrows that met in a satis-
factory manner over his nose, and were matched by
a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin.
He had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth
cap to give it the air of a turban, and his red com-
forter across his breast as a scarf — an amount of red
which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and
the decision with which he grasped the sword, as he
held it with its point resting on the ground, would
suffice to convey an approximative idea of his fierce
and bloodthirsty disposition.

Maggie looked bewildered for a moment, and
Tom enjoyed that moment keenly ; but in the next,
she laughed, clapped her hands together, and said,
" 0 Tom, you've made yourself like Bluebeard at the
show/'

It was clear she had not been struck with the
presence of the sword — it was not unsheathed. Her
frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to its
sense of the terrible, and Tom prepared for his master-
stroke. Frowning with a double amount of inten-
tion, if not of corrugation, he (carefully) drew the
sword from its sheath and pointed it at Maggie.

VOL. L y

338 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" 0 Tom, please don't/' exclaimed Maggie, in ^
tone of suppressed dread, shrinking away from him
into the opposite corner, " I shall scream — I'm sure
I shall ! 0 don't ! I wish I'd never come up-stairs ! ''

The corners of Tom's mouth showed an inclina-
tion to a smile of complacency that was immediately
checked as inconsistent with the severity of a great
warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the
floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then
said, sternly, —

" I'm the Duke of Wellington ! March ! " stamp-
ing forward with the right leg a little bent, and the
sword still pointing towards Maggie, who, trem-
bling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as
the only means of widening the space between them.

Tom, happy in this spectator of his military per-
formances, even though the spectator was only Mag-
gie, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of his force,
to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would
necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.

**Tom, I will not bear it — I will scream," said
Maggie, at the first movement of the sword. " You'll
hurt yourself ; you'll cut your head off ! "

"One — two," said Tom, resolutely, though at
"two" his wrist trembled a little. "Three,'' came
more slowly, and with it the sword swung down-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

wards, and Maggie gave a loud shriek The sword
had fallen, with its edge on Tom's foot, and in a mo-
ment after, he had fallen too. Maggie leaped from
the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was
a rush of footsteps towards the room. Mr Stelling,
from his up-stairs study, was the first to enter. He
found both the children on the floor. Tom had
fainted, and Maggie was shaking him by the collar
of his jacket, screaming, with wild eyes. She thought
he was dead, poor child ! and yet she shook him, as
if that would bring him back to life. In another
minute she was sobbing with joy because Tom had
opened his eyes ; she couldn't sorrow yet that he
had hurt his foot — ^it seemed as if all happiness lay
in his being aliva •

CHAPTER VI.

A LOVE SCENE.

Poor Tom bore his severe pain heroically, and was
resolute in not "telling" of Mr Poulter more
than was unavoidable : the five-shilling piece re-
mained a secret even to Maggie. But there was a
terrible dread weighing on his mind — so terrible
that he dared not even ask the question which might
bring the fatal "yes " — he dared .not ask the surgeon
or Mr Stelling," Shall I be lame, sir ? " He mastered
himself so as not to cry out at the pain, but when
his foot had been dressed, and he was left alone with
Maggie seated by his bedside, the children sobbed
together with their heads laid on the same pillow.
Tom was thinking of himself walking about on
crutches, like the wheelwright's son; and Maggie,
who did not guess what was in his mind, sobbed for
company. It had not occurred to the surgeon or to
Mr Stelling to anticipate this dread in Tom's mind,
and to reassure him by hopeful words. But Philip

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 341

watched the surgeon out of the house, and waylaid
Mr Stelling to ask the very question that Tom had
not dared to ask for himself.

" I beg your pardon, sir, — ^but does Mr Askem say
Tulliver will be lame ? "

*' O no, 0 no,'' said Mr Stelling, " not permanently,
only for a little while."

" Did he tell Tulliver so, sir, do you think ? "

" No : nothing was said to him on the subject"

" Then may I go and tell him, sir ? "

" Yes, to be sure : now you mention it, I daresay
he may be troubling about that. Go to his bedroom,
but be very quiet at present."

It had been Philip's first thought when he heard
of the accident — " Will Tulliver be lame ? It will
be very hard for him if he is " — and Tom's hitherto
unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity.
Philip felt that they were no longer in a state of
repulsion, but were being drawn into a common
current of suffering and sad privation. His imagin-
ation did not dwell on the outward calamity and its
future effect on Tom's life, but it made vividly pre-
sent to him the probable state of Tom's feeling : he
had only lived fourteen years, but those years had,
most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot
irremediably hard.

342 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

" Mr Askern says you'll soon be all right again,
Tulliver, did you know?'' he said, rather timidly,
as he stepped gently up to Tom's bed. " IVe just
been to ask Mr Stelling, and he says you'll walk
as well as ever again, by-and-by."

Tom looked up with that momentary stopping of
the breath which comes with a sudden joy ; then
he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-grey eyes
straight on Philip's face, as he had not done for a
fortnight or more. As for Maggie, this intimation
of a possibility she had not thought of before,
affected her as a new trouble ; the bare idea of
Tom's being always lame overpowered the assur-
ance that such a misfortune was not likely to befall
him, and she clung to him and cried afresh.

" Don't be a little silly, Magsie," said Tom, ten-
derly, feeling very brave now. " I shall soon get
well."

" Good-by, Tulliver," said Philip, putting out his
small, delicate hand, which Tom clasped immediately
with his more substantial fingers.

" I say," said Tom, " ask Mr Stelling to let you
come and sit with me sometimes, till I get up again,
Wakem — and tell me about Eobert Bruce, you
know."

After that, Philip spent all his time out of school-

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 343

hours with Tom and Maggie. Tom liked to hear
fighting stories as much as ever, but he insisted
strongly on the fact that those great fighters, who
did so many wonderful things and came ofi" unhurt,
wore excellent armour from head to foot, which
made fighting easy work, he considered. He should
not have hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe
on. He listened with great interest to a new story
of Philip's about a man who had a very bad wound
in his foot, and cried out so dreadfully with the
pain that his friends could bear with him no longer,
but put him ashore on a desert island, with nothing
but some wonderful poisoned arrows to kill animals
with for food.

" I didn't roar out a bit, you know," Tom said,
" and I daresay my foot was as bad as his. It's
cowardly to roar."

But Maggie would have it that when anything
hurt you very much, it was quite permissible to cry
out, and it was cruel of people not to bear it. She
wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why
she didn't go with him on the desert island and take
care of him.

One day, soon after Philip had told this story,
he and Maggie were in the study alone together
while Tom's foot was being dressed. Philip was

344 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

at his books, and Maggie, after sauntering idly
round the room, not caring to do anything in par-
ticular, because she would soon go to Tom again,
went and leaned on the table near Philip to see
what he was doing, for they were quite old friends
now, and perfectly at home with each other.

"What are you reading about in Greek?'* she
said. " It's poetry — I can see that, because the
lines are so shorf

"It's about Philoctetes — the lame man I was
telling you of yesterday," he answered, resting his
head on his hand and looking at her, as if he were
not at all sorry to be interrupted. Maggie, in her
absent way, continued to lean forward, resting- on
her arms and moving her feet about, while her dark
eyes got more and more fixed and vacant, as if she
had quite forgotten Philip and his book.

" Maggie,'' said Philip, after a minute or two, still
leaning on his elbow and looking at her, " if you
had had a brother like me, do you think you should
have loved him as well as Tom ? "

Maggie started a little on being roused from her
reverie, and said, "What?" Philip repeated his
question.

" 0 yes, better," she answered, immediately. " No,
not better ; because I don't think I could love you

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 345

better than Tom. But I should be so sorry— 50
sorry for you."

Philip coloured : he had meant to imply, would
she love him as well in spite of his deformity, and
yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he winced
under her pity. Maggie, young as she was, felt her
mistake. Hitherto she had instinctively behaved
as if she were quite unconscious of Philip's de-
formity; her own keen sensitiveness and experi-
ence under family criticism sufficed to teach her
this, as well as if she had been directed by the most
finished breeding.

" But you are so very clever, Philip, and you can
play and sing," she added, quickly. " I wish you
were my brother. I'm very fond of you. And you
would stay at home with me when Tom went out,
and you would teach me everything — wouldn't you ?
Greek and everything ? "

" But you'll go away soon, and go to school,
Maggie,'' said Philip, "and then youll forget all
about me, and not care for me any more. And
then I shall see you when you're grown up, and
you'll hardly take any notice of me."

" 0 no, I shan't forget you, I'm sure," said Mag-
gie, shaking her head very seriously. " I never for-
get anything, and I think about everybody when

346 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

I'm away from them. I think about poor Yap —
he's got a lump in his throat, and Luke says he'll
die. Only don't you tell Tom, because it will vex
him so. You never saw Yap : he's a queer little
dog — nobody cares about him but Tom and me."

" Do you care as much about me as you do about
Yap, Maggie ? " said Philip, smiling rather sadly.

" 0 yes, I should think so," said Maggie, laughing.

" I'm very fond of you, Maggie ; I shall never for-
get you" said Philip, " and when I'm very unhappy,
I shall always think of you, and wish I had a sister
with dark eyes, just like yours."'

" Why do you like my eyes ? " said Maggie, well
pleased. She had never heard any one but her
father speak of her eyes as if they had merit.

" I don't know," said Philip. " They're not like
any other eyes. They seem trying to speak — trying
to speak kindly. I don't like other people to look
at me much, but I like you to look at me, Maggie."

" Why, I think you're fonder of me than Tom is,"
said Maggie, rather sorrowfully. Then, wondering
how she could convince Philip that she could like
him just as well, although he was crooked, she said,

" Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Tom ?
I wlU, if you like."

" Yes, very much : nobody kisses me."

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 347

Maggie put her arm round his neck and kissed
him quite earnestly.

" There now," she said, " I shall always remember
you, and kiss you when I see you again, if it's ever
so long. But I'll go now, because I think Mr Ask-
ern's done with Tom's foot."

When their father came the second time, Maggie
said to him, " 0 father, Philip Wakem is so very
good to Tom — he is such a clever boy, and I do love
him. And you love him too, Tom, don't you ? Sai/
you love him,'' she added, entreatingly.

Tom coloured a little as he looked at his father
and said, " I shan't be friends with him when I leave
school, father, but we've made it up now, since my
foot has been bad, and he's taught me to play at
draughts, and I can beat him."

"Well, well," said Mr Tulliver, "if he's good to
you, try and make him amends, and be good to him.
He's a poor crooked creatur, and takes after his dead
mother. But don't you be getting too thick with
him — he's got his father's blood in him too. Ay,
ay, the grey colt may chance to kick like his black
sire."

The jarring natures of the two boys effected what
Mr Tulliver's admonition alone might have failed to
effect : in spite of Philip's new kindness, and Tom's

348 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

answering regard in this time of his trouble, they
never became close friends. When Maggie was gone,
and when Tom by-and-by began to walk about as
usual, the friendly warmth that had been kindled by
pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left them
in their old relation to each other. Philip was often
peevish and contemptuous ; and Tom's more specific
and kindly impressions gradually melted into the old
background of suspicion and dislike towards him as
a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue.
rf boys and men are to be welded together in the
glow of transient feeling, they must be made of
metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder
when the heat dies out.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GOLDEN GATES AKE PASSED.

So Tom went on even to the fifth half-year — till he
was turned sixteen — at King's Lorton, while Maggie
was growing, with a rapidity which her aunts con-
sidered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss's board-
ing-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the
Floss, with cousin Lucy for her companion. In her
early letters to Tom she had always sent her love to
Philip, and asked many questions about him, which
were answered by brief sentences about Tom's tooth-
ache, and a turf-house which he was helping to build
in the garden, with other items of that kind. She
was pained to hear Tom say in the holidays that
Philip was as queer as ever again, and often cross :
they were no longer very good friends, she perceived ;
and when she reminded Tom that he ought always
to love PhiKp for being so good to him when his foot
was bad, he answered, " Well, it isn't my fault : /

350 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

don't do anything to him." She hardly ever saw
Philip during the remainder of their school-life ; in
the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the
seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him
at long intervals in the streets of St Ogg's. When
they did meet, she remembered her promise to kiss
him, but, as a young lady who had been at a board-
ing-school, she knew now that such a greeting was
out of the question, and Philip would not expect it.
The promise was void, like so many other sweet,
illusory promises of our childhood ; void as promises
made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and
when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the
ripening peach — impossible to be fulfilled when the
golden gates had been passed.

But when their father was actually engaged in
the long-threatened lawsuit, and Wakem, as the
agent at once of Pivart and Old Harry, was acting
against him, even Maggie felt, with some sadness,
that they were not likely ever to have any intimacy
with Philip again : the very name of Wakem made
her father angry, and she had once heard him say,
that if that crookbacked son lived to inherit his
father's ill-gotten gains, there would be a curse
upon him. "Have as little to do with him at
school as you can, my lad," he said to Tom; and

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 851

the command was obeyed the more easily because
Mr Stelling by this time had two additional pupils ;
for though this gentleman's rise in the world was
not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers
of his extemporaneous eloquence had expected for
a preacher whose voice demanded so wide a sphere,
he had yet enough of growing prosperity to enable
him to increase his expenditure in continued dis-
proportion to his income.

As for Tom's school course, it went on with mill-
like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a
slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium of uninteresting
or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought
home larger and larger drawings with the satiny
rendering of landscape, and water-colours in vivid
greens, together with manuscript books full of ex-
ercises and problems, in which the handwriting was
all the finer because he gave his whole mind to it.
Each vacation he brought home a new book or two,
indicating his progress through different stages of
history. Christian doctrine, and Latin literature;
and that passage was not entirely without result,
besides the possession of the books. Tom's ear and
tongue had become accustomed to a great many
words and phrases which are understood to be signs
of an educated condition ; and though he had never

352 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

really applied his mind to any one of his lessons,
the lessons had left a deposit of vague, fragmentary,
ineffectual notions. Mr Tulliver, seeing signs of
acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism,
thought it was probably all right with Tom's edu-
cation: he observed, indeed, that there were no
maps, and not enough "summing;" but he made
no formal complaint to Mr Stelling. It was a
puzzling business, this schooling ; and if he took
Tom away, where could he send him with better
effect?

By the time Tom had reached his last quarter at
King's Lorton, the years had made striking changes
in him since the day we saw him returning from
Mr Jacobs' academy. He was a tall youth now,
carrying hunself without the least awkwardness, and
speaking without more shyness than was a becom-
ing symptom of blended diffidence and pride : he
wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and
watched the down on his lip with eager impatience,
looking every day at his virgin razor, with which he
had provided himself in the last holidays. Philip
had abeady left — at the autumn quarter — that he
might go to the south for the winter, for the sake of
his health ; and this change helped to give Tom the
unsettled, exultant feeling that usually belongs to

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 353

the last months before leaving school. This quar-
ter, too, there was some hope of his father's law-
suit being decided : that made the prospect of
home more entirely pleasurable. Por Tom, who had
gathered his view of the case from his father's con-
versation, had no doubt that Pivart would be
beaten.

Tom had not heard anything from home for some
weeks — a fact which did not surprise him, for his
father and mother were not apt to manifest their
affection in unnecessary letters — when, to his great
surprise, on the morning of a dark cold day near
the end of November, he was told, soon after enter-
ing the study at nine o'clock, that his sister was in
the drawing-room. It was Mrs Stelling who had
come into the study to tell him, and she left him to
enter the drawing-room alone.

Maggie, too, was tall now, with braided and
coiled hair : she was almost as tall as Tom, though
she was only thirteen ; and she really looked older
than he did at that moment She had thrown
off her bonnet, her heavy braids were pushed back
from her forehead, as if it would not bear that extra
load, and her young face had a strangely worn look,
as her eyes turned anxiously towards the door.
When Tom entered she did not speak, but only went

VOL. L Z

354 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

up to him, put her arms round his neck, and kissed
him earnestly. He was used to various moods of
hers, and felt no alarm at the unusual seriousness of
her greeting.

" Why, how is it you're come so early this cold
morning, Maggie? Did you come in the gig?"
said Tom, as she backed towards the sofa, and drew
him to her side.

" No, I came by the coach. I've walked from the
turnpike."

" But how is it you're not at school ? The holi-
days have not begun yet ? "

" Father wanted me at home," said Maggie, with
a slight trembling of the lip. " I came home three
or four days ago."

"Isn't my father well?" said Tom, rather anx-
iously.

" Not quite," said Maggie. " He's very unhappy,
Tom. The lawsuit is ended, and I came to tell
you, because I thought it would be better for you
to know it before you came home, and I didn't like
only to send you a letter."

"My father hasn't lost?" said Tom, hastily,
springing from the sofa, and standing before
Maggie with his hands suddenly thrust in his
pockets.

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 355

" Yes, dear Tom/' said Maggie, looking up at him
with trembling.

Tom was silent a minute or two, with his eyes
fixed on the floor. Then he said —

"My father will have to pay a good deal of
money, then ? "

" Yes," said Maggie, rather faintly.

" Well, it can't be helped,'' said Tom, bravely, not
translating the loss of a large sum of money into
any tangible results. " But my father's very much
vexed, I daresay?" he added, looking at Maggie,
and thinking that her agitated face was only part of
her girlish way of taking things.

" Yes," said Maggie, again faintly. Then, urged
to fuller speech by Tom's freedom from apprehen-
sion, she said loudly and rapidly, as if the words
would burst from her, " 0 Tom, he will lose the
mill and the land, and everything; he will have
nothing left."

Tom's eyes flashed out one look of surprise at
her, before he turned pale and trembled visibly. He
said nothing, but sat down on the sofa again, look-
ing vaguely out of the opposite window.

Anxiety about the future had never entered Tom's
mind. His father had always ridden a good horse,
kept a good house, and had the cheerful, confident

356 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back
upon. Tom had never dreamed that his father
would "fail ;" that was a form of misfortune which
he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace,
and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate
with any of his relations, least of all with his father.
A proud sense of family respectability was part of
the very air Tom had been born and brought up in.
He knew there were people in St Ogg's who made a
show without money to support it, and he had always
heard such people spoken of by his own friends with
contempt and reprobation. He had a strong belief,
which was a life-long habit, and required no definite
evidence to rest on, that his father could spend a
great deal of money if he chose ; and since his edu-
cation at Mr Stelling's had given him a more expen-
sive view of life, he had often thought that when he
got older he would make a figure in the world, with
his horse and dogs and saddle, and other accoutre-
ments of a fine young man, and show himself equal
to any of his contemporaries at St Ogg's, who might
consider themselves a grade above him in society,
because their fathers were professional men, or had
large oil-mills. As to the prognostics and head-
shaking of his aunts and uncles, they had never pro-
duced the least efiect on him, except to make him

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. o57

think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable so-
ciety: he had heard them find fault in much the
same way as long as he could remember. His father
knew better than they did.

The down had come on Tom's lip, yet his thoughts
and expectations had been hitherto only the repro-
duction, in changed forms, of the boyish dreams
in which he had lived three years ago. He was
awakened now with a violent shock.

Maggie was frightened at Tom's pale, trembling
silence. There was something else to tell him —
something worse. She threw her arms round him
at last, and said, with a half sob —

" 0 Tom — dear, dear Tom, don't fret too much-
try and bear it welL''

Tom turned his cheek passively to meet her en-
treating kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his
eyes, which he just rubbed away with his hand.
The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook him-
self and said, " I shall go home with you, Maggie.
Didn't my father say I was to go ?"

" No, Tom, father didn't wish it," said Maggie, her
anxiety about his feeling helping her to master her
agitation. What luould he do when she told him all ?
*' But mother wants you to come — poor mother ! —
she cries so. 0, Tom, it's very dreadful at home."

358 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Maggie's lips grew whiter, and she began to
tremble ^Imost as Tom had done. The two poor
things clung closer to each other — both trembling —
the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image
of a terrible certainty. When Maggie spoke, it was
hardly above a whisper.

" And . . . and .... poor father . . . ."

Maggie could not utter it. But the suspense
was intolerable to Tom. A vague idea of going to
prison, as a consequence of debt, was the shape his
fears had begun to take.

"Where's my father?" he said, impatiently.
" Tell me, Maggie.''

" He's at home," said Maggie, finding it easier to
reply to that question. " But," she added, after a
pause, " not himself . . . He fell off his horse. . . .

He has known nobody but me ever since

He seems to have lost his senses 0, father,

father . . . ."

With these last words, Maggie's sobs burst forth
with the more violence for the previous struggle
against them. Tom felt that pressure of the heart
which forbids tears : he had no distinct vision of
their troubles as Maggie had, who had been at
home : he only felt the crushing weight of what
seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 359

arm almost convulsively round Maggie as she
sobbed, but bis face looked rigid and tearless —
his eyes blank— as if a black curtain of cloud had
suddenly fallen on his path.

But Maggie soon checked herself abruptly : a
single thought had acted on her like a startling
sound.

''We must set out, Tom — we must not stay —
father will miss me — we must be at the turnpike
at ten to meet the coach." She said this with
hasty decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize
her bonnet.

Tom at once felt the same impulse, and rose too.
" Wait a minute, Maggie,'* he said. " I must speak
to Mr Stelling, and then we'll go.''

He thought he must go to the study where the
pupils were, but on his way he met Mr Stelling,
who had heard from his wife that Maggie appeared
to be in trouble when she asked for her brother ;
and, now that he thought the brother and sister
had been alone long enough, was coming to inquire
and offer his sympathy.

" Please, sir, I must go home," Tom said, abruptly,
as he met Mr Stelling in the passage. " I must go
back with my sister directly. My father's lost his
lawsuit — he's lost all his property — and he's very ill.'*

360 THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.

Mr Stelling felt like a kind-hearted man ; he fore-
saw a probable money loss for himself, but this had
no appreciable share in his feeling, while he looked
with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom
youth and sorrow had begun together. When he
knew how Maggie had come, and how eager she
was to get home again, he hurried their departure,
only whispering something to Mrs Stelling, who had
followed him, and who immediately left the room.

Tom and Maggie were standing on the door-step,
ready to set out, when Mrs Stelling came with a
little basket, which she hung on Maggie's arms,
saying, "Do remember to eat something on the
way, dear." Maggie's heart went out towards this
woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed
her silently. It was the first sign within the poor
child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow
— that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity
which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship,
as to haggard men among the icebergs the mere pre-
sence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep foun-
tains of affection.

Mr Stelling put his hand on Tom's shoulder and
said, " God bless you, my boy : let me know how
you get on." Then he pressed Maggie's hand ; but
there were no audible good-bys. Tom had so often

THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. 3GI

thought how joyful he should be the day he left
school " for good ! " And now his school -years
seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.

The two slight youthful figures soon grew indis-
tinct on the distant road — ^were soon lost behind the
projecting hedgerow.

They had gone forth together into their new life
of sorrow, and they would never more see the sun-
shine undimmed by remembered cares. They had
entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates
of their childhood had for ever closed behind them.

END or THE FIRST VOLUME.

PamTKD BY WII-LIAM BLACKWOOli JU>D SONS, EDINBUJiGIl.